Digital IBP
Align strategy, execution, and financial outcomes in a single, always-on planning system.
At its core, IBP is designed to translate strategic intent into coordinated, financially sound actions across the enterprise. Yet in many organizations, IBP has devolved into a monthly cadence of spreadsheet reconciliation, slide preparation, and functional compromise—producing alignment in theory, but limited impact in practice.
o9 Digital IBP connects Commercial, Supply, and Financial plans into one continuously synchronized system, enabling leadership teams to make forward-looking decisions with full visibility into revenue, margin, service, and sustainability impact.
o9 Digital IBP re-establishes IBP as a strategic management capability, not a process milestone. By connecting commercial, supply, and financial plans into a single, always-on digital system, organizations gain the ability to sense change early, evaluate trade-offs holistically, and act with confidence. Decisions such as portfolio shifts, pricing actions, capacity reallocation, or sustainability trade-offs are no longer debated in isolation. Instead, leaders see their downstream impact on revenue, margin, service levels, working capital, and ESG objectives—before committing.
This shift fundamentally changes how decisions are made. Instead of coordinating after the fact like a pit crew reacting to breakdowns, Digital IBP enables a “pit wall” model—where leaders guide the business using real-time signals, simulations, and forward-looking insights.
Business challenges organizations face
Traditional IBP struggles not because the concept is flawed, but because the execution model has not kept pace with the complexity of modern enterprises. In many organizations, IBP remains functionally owned by supply chain teams, with limited commercial and financial integration. This leads to decisions that optimize feasibility or efficiency, but not enterprise value.
Planning cycles are often slow and static. By the time data is consolidated and presented, assumptions have already changed. Teams spend more time debating whose numbers are correct than discussing what actions should be taken. Performance metrics differ across functions, reinforcing silos rather than encouraging shared accountability. Sustainability and resilience considerations, when included at all, are typically handled outside the core planning process.
This fragmentation becomes increasingly costly as volatility becomes structural. Demand shifts faster than planning cycles can adapt. Supply disruptions cascade across networks. Financial targets are set without clear operational pathways. Sustainability and resilience considerations are handled outside the core decision-making process.
Digital IBP addresses these challenges by transforming IBP into a continuous, decision-centric capability. Instead of aligning plans once per month, organizations continuously sense change, evaluate trade-offs, and adjust course—while maintaining a single, trusted view of the business.
From Periodic Alignment to Continuous Enterprise Decision-Making
Leading organizations are redefining IBP as the system of record for enterprise decisions. Rather than maintaining separate views for strategy, operations, and finance, they align around a shared enterprise plan that supports decisions across all horizons.
This does not require forcing all teams into the same planning cadence or level of detail. Executives may focus on aggregated outcomes and trade-offs, while planners work at SKU, customer, or location level. Digital IBP ensures these perspectives remain connected, reconciled, and explainable—so decisions scale across the organization without friction.
What this solution enables
Digital IBP in o9 enables continuous alignment across the enterprise by synchronizing commercial, supply, and financial plans in real time. Instead of managing disconnected models, organizations operate on a single, living plan that reflects the latest assumptions, constraints, and opportunities.
Performance gaps against the Annual Operating Plan are detected early, when corrective actions still matter. Teams can simulate alternative strategies—such as pricing adjustments, promotion changes, sourcing shifts, or capacity investments—and immediately understand the financial and operational consequences of each option.
Executive reviews move from static presentations to live, system-driven conversations. Leaders can explore scenarios directly, test assumptions on the fly, and make decisions with full transparency into trade-offs. End-to-end visibility extends from customers to suppliers, integrating structured enterprise data with external signals to proactively sense risks and opportunities.
Sustainability is embedded directly into decision-making. Carbon emissions, waste, and resiliency metrics are evaluated alongside cost, service, and margin, allowing organizations to balance growth with long-term responsibility.
Enterprise-Wide Plan Synchronization
Digital IBP synchronizes commercial, supply, and financial plans in real time. Changes in demand assumptions, supply constraints, or financial targets are reflected instantly across the enterprise, eliminating lag and manual reconciliation.
Gap Detection and Scenario Evaluation
Performance gaps versus the Annual Operating Plan are identified early, when corrective action still matters. Teams can simulate alternative strategies—such as pricing, promotions, sourcing changes, or capacity adjustments—and immediately see their financial and operational impact.
Executive Decision-Making on the Platform
IBP reviews move from static presentations to live, system-driven conversations. Leaders can explore scenarios, challenge assumptions, and make decisions directly within the platform, with full transparency into trade-offs and consequences.
End-to-End Visibility Including ESG Metrics
Digital IBP provides visibility from customers to suppliers, integrating structured enterprise data with external signals. Sustainability metrics such as carbon emissions and waste are embedded directly into planning scenarios, enabling balanced, responsible decisions.
What Makes o9 Different
Financial-First Decision Orientation
Unlike supply-centric IBP tools, o9 evaluates every scenario through the lens of financial outcomes. Revenue, margin, cash, and working capital are embedded into the planning model, ensuring decisions drive enterprise value rather than local optimization.
Extended Collaboration Beyond the Enterprise
o9 enables collaboration with key suppliers and customers, supporting joint business planning and multi-tier visibility. This shared perspective improves responsiveness and reduces risk across the value chain.
Unified Data Model with Real-Time Performance
All planning functions operate on a single data foundation, eliminating the “battle of the numbers.” High-performance modeling allows real-time scenario analysis at scale, without sacrificing complexity or detail.
One plan, All processes
o9's Graph Cube Data Model enables synchronized planning at all levels.
Full P&L/KPI visibility
Understand financial metrics such as margins, revenues, and working capital. Use financial reasoning and reconciliation within the integrated planning process.
Big Data Enabled
Leverage real-time structured and unstructured data from the market, customers, and operations to drive insights into trends and potential disruptions.
Industries Supported
Powered by the o9 Digital Brain
Digital Integrated Business Planning runs on the o9 Digital Brain, powered by the Enterprise Knowledge Graph (EKG).
The EKG acts as a digital backbone, connecting data, processes, and decisions across the organization. It breaks down silos by modeling relationships between products, customers, markets, and financials, enabling a shared understanding of demand. This graph-based architecture enables planning at any level of aggregation and across multiple time horizons within a single model. It supports rapid adaptation as business models, strategies, and operating environments evolve.
Built on open standards such as Apache Hadoop and Spark, the platform integrates seamlessly with existing enterprise architectures and supports both structured data and unstructured tribal knowledge.
Modular by design, enterprise by default
o9 accelerates implementation through configurable building blocks that can be tailored to unique business requirements.
Digital IBP is delivered through modular building blocks, including consensus demand planning, supply and capacity planning, financial reconciliation, scenario management, and executive collaboration. These components operate on a shared foundation, ensuring consistency and speed from strategy through execution.
Core Building Blocks
These foundational components establish shared data, network visibility, and collaborative workflows across the supplier ecosystem.
Advanced Building Blocks
These components apply AI and automation to turn collaboration into proactive orchestration and resilience.
A digital operating model for VUCA conditions
APEX is o9’s AI-powered operating model for enterprises navigating volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity (VUCA). It enables organizations to plan, execute, and learn as one connected system.
The o9 Digital Brain powers APEX by connecting enterprise data, knowledge, and decisions through a single intelligent model.
Collaborative Demand Planning is one of the building blocks of the Digital Brain. It contributes domain-specific capabilities into the enterprise-wide model that enables APEX from the ground up—linking this solution to decisions across the entire value chain.
→ Learn how the APEX Operating Model works
Where AI drives real decisions
AI enhances Digital IBP by shifting organizations from reactive coordination to proactive decision-making.
Machine learning models improve forecast accuracy using leading indicators.
Prescriptive analytics recommend actions and quantify trade-offs.
Generative AI enables natural-language interaction with plans, while agentic AI automates analysis, monitoring, and reporting.
→ Learn more about o9 AI innovations
Results in real-world complexity
Global enterprises across industries have used o9 Digital IBP to increase baseline sales, reduce inventory losses, improve service levels, and embed sustainability directly into decision-making.
Large enterprises such as AB InBev, PepsiCo, and leading automotive suppliers have consolidated fragmented planning processes onto a single cloud-native platform, achieving faster decisions and measurable financial outcomes.
Large Global Beer Enterprise ($58B Revenue)
By leveraging o9’s integrated planning platform, this company replaced legacy systems such as SAP APO with a single, cloud-native solution, streamlining demand forecasting, supply planning, and inventory management.
60%
Reduction in out-of-stocks
53%
Decrease in inventory losses
4 year
High in service levels
30%
Time savings by planners
70-90%
Touchless planning adoption reached 70-90% across key markets.
Multinational Electronics Company ($7B Revenue)
This large-scale Consumer Electronics multinational adopted o9’s integrated planning platform, which brought together supply and demand planning into a single unified system. The implementation introduced advanced capabilities, such as a network-based MEIO, supply planning simulations to increase demand supportability, and constraint-based supply planning.
By consolidating previously disjointed processes and tools and unlocking new capabilities, the transformation enabled this company to improve forecast accuracy, increase service levels , and reduce inventory holdings.
11%
Reduction in Weighted Mean Absolute Percentage Error
~12.5M$
Reduction in safety stock levels
4-month
Forecast bias brought under control
What our customers say
“So with IBP, what we are achieving now is one single source of truth. Everyone aligns behind one number, with the ultimate accountability for IBP being the general manager. So you take the power out of the functions and give it to the general manager to run the business as they see fit, which is unbelievable.”
Dr. Athina Kanioura
Chief Strategy and Transformation Officer
Related solutions
Long Range Planning (LRP)
ESG & Sustainability
Gain end-to-end visibility and turn it into sustainable action. With the o9 Digital Brain platform, measure your footprint and drive sustainable decisions across the value chain.
Demand Planning
Modular end-to-end planning platform that unifies collaborative forecasting, advanced AI/ML, and cross-functional scenario planning
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Digital IBP is a continuous planning and decision-making capability that connects strategy, execution, and financial outcomes in a single system.