Executive Summary

  • This article is designed to gauge interest in new research into SAP IBP.
  • We outline the research and questions that have yet to be answered around IBP.

Introduction

Before undertaking research, we are increasingly obtaining input for potential new research. This article will describe potential research into SAP IBP.

About IBP

SAP IBP is SAP’s partial replacement for APO, which began to receive tracking in the early 2000s, and became the most widely used advanced planning system.

IBP is an odd SAP product because even after five years, there is remarkably little information published about the application. SAP has, of course, made a major effort to migrate customers from APO to IBP.

This IBP research study would answer the following questions.

Item #1: What is the IBP Design Versus APO?

IBP is not an upgrade but an application with many differences from APO. There is also a fair amount of confusion about IBP’s scope, which tends to get deemphasized in SAP’s explanations around IBP.

This study will answer the design question around IBP and what changed from APO.

Item #2: SAP’s Migration Plan

Because IBP is an entirely different product from APO, with a different scope and extensive integration into Excel and the use of Excel for the user interface, the term migration is more of a euphemism than a technical reality. IBP is a new implementation for any customer that already has APO.

  1. This category of analysis gets to the question of what parts of APO are designed to be migrated to APO and which are supposed to be placed into S/4HANA?
  2. What are SAP and SAP consulting companies telling customers and prospects about how to migrate from APO to IBP?
  3. Just as importantly, what is the reality versus the statements by SAP?

Item #3: IBP’s Development Progress and Roadmap

  1. How has IBP progressed so far in its development?
  2. What is the reality of the IBP roadmap?

This will naturally will be far less than presented by SAP.

This study will provide evidence for the reality of these items, backed up by Brightwork’s unrivaled history of accuracy in SAP prediction as covered in the article A Study into SAP’s Accuracy.

Item #4: What is the SAP IBP Application?

  1. How does IBP look and function as an application? What is it good at, what is it not good at? This section of the analysis will cover the analysis of the application and to related topics such as its integration and how it works with other SAP applications. We will add IBP screenshots and describe its overall design.
  2. What are the functionalty coverage areas and gaps with IBP?

Item #5: Potential Custom Additions

There may be questions you have that you would like added to the research. There is the option of adding custom questions.

The SAP Expertise of the Researcher

  1. A long term SAP consultant with decades of experience in SAP will write the research has written multiple books on SAP, and has a large SAP network and sources from all over the world that provides information to Brightwork. When the research is shared with individuals outside of the company, it will not be possible to assert that the author is not knowledgable in SAP.
  2. Naturally, pro-SAP resources will of course attempt to redirect the conversation back to SAP or SAP partner created material. The difference is that in most cases, there is no countervailing analysis provided, and SAP uses a multi-entity method of making it appear as if marketing information is the industry consensus.

Getting Accurate Information on SAP

Individuals or entities write nearly all material written on SAP with a pro-SAP financial bias. And we have demonstrated the high degree of inaccuracy in the information provided about SAP to the marketplace.

Brightwork gets to the truth of SAP.

The objective is not promotion or demotion, but accuracy.

Accuracy is both what competing vendors and SAP customers are sorely lacking. In most cases, the reality of SAP products is only learned after the purchase and many months into the implementation.

Our Previous Research

Here is an example of the research in our Brightwork Study in Oracle Database Usage.

What You Can Expect from the Research in Terms of Management, Access, and the Licensing Arrangement

This is research that is not for public consumption and is only accessible by those that buy a license.

We cover details of the research articles related to how they are accessed, license restrictions, and other important details in the article Brightwork Licensed Research.

(Please do not forward this research to link to anyone else. It is also licensed and is only being provided for you to observe an example. It has a redemption cap set.)

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Conclusion

We are sharing this article to gauge interest for a study into IBP that would be password protected and shareable by our customers.