Turn Supply Chain Planning into a competitive edge for your midsize company

Midsize business supply chains are feeling just as much pressure as larger enterprises. Their supply chains are just as complicated and sometimes more complex and have the same needs as larger companies. There is no correlation between company size and complexity. The competitive edge for midsize companies will come from diversifying supply chains, being more forward-looking, transforming processes where needed and adding technology to support transformation. 

Supply chain planning is an area where midsized companies should focus to gain a competitive edge. This can be achieved by focusing on 3 main areas –  

1. Unified plan, rigour and discipline in the planning process as well as all stakeholders working on the same plan. 
2. Visibility, complete visibility across a company’s operations and with business partners 
3. Integrated business planning system to enable real-time processes and have visibility across the supply chain. 

SAP planning tools allow companies to predict future possibilities, propose alternatives and prepare for the next disruption.

For midsize businesses integrated business planning can improve revenue, operating costs and asset utilisation/working capital

From the 2022 SAP IBP for Supply Chain Annual Customer Report we can see the increase in use of planning statistics with the solution as well as a few fun facts on how many rail tracks, french fries, milk and of course beer SAP IBP has helped to get moving!

Some perceive SAP as too big to work with, too expensive, and too complicated for midsize companies to leverage. Although it’s true that SAP can be found in most of the largest companies of the world but it is a misconception that SAP is too big, too complicated, and too expensive for midsize companies. The majority of customer for SAP Integrated Business Planning are midsize companies, they are leveraging planning to help them become more resilient and to grow.

SAP IBP scales to accommodate business growth and integrates with other SAP and third-party systems so there are no barriers to midsize companies being able to leverage their data to drive efficiency and profitability.