Ask a mid-sized company if they’re interested in Integrated Business Planning (IBP), and you’ll often hear, “Yes—but we’re not ready yet.”
That hesitation isn’t about lack of ambition. It’s about reality.
For many mid-market businesses, the move from traditional Sales & Operations Planning (S&OP) to IBP feels like a leap. It requires cross-functional collaboration, strategic alignment, and often, a cultural shift. But the truth is, you don’t need to be perfect to start—you just need to understand the roadblocks so you can start moving past them.
Here are the five most common reasons mid-sized companies struggle to get IBP off the ground—and how to overcome them.
1. It’s Treated Like a Software Project, Not a Business Strategy
One of the biggest mistakes? Thinking IBP is a tech implementation.
Yes, planning platforms like Kinaxis or ketteQ, can enable IBP—but they’re not the strategy. Without executive vision, cross-functional leadership, and process ownership, software alone won’t get you there.
“IBP must be driven by the business and supported by IT—not the other way around.”
— Oliver Wight, Integrated Business Planning Whitepaper
The Fix:
Start by aligning stakeholders around what IBP is for—not what it does. Tie it to business outcomes like margin protection, working capital improvement, and faster decision cycles.
2. Finance Isn’t at the Table
In traditional S&OP, finance is often peripheral—focused on budgeting or reconciling forecasts after the fact. But in IBP, finance is a co-pilot, helping guide decisions based on P&L impact, scenario outcomes, and long-range goals.
Without finance engaged from the beginning, IBP never moves past operations.
The Fix:
Bring finance into planning conversations early. Link scenarios to margin and cash flow. Make financial performance part of the plan review—not just a scorecard.
3. Siloed Ownership and Departmental Resistance
IBP requires true cross-functional planning—sales, ops, marketing, finance, and leadership. But many mid-sized companies still operate in silos, with each team protecting its own numbers and assumptions.
That makes it hard to build trust or align around a single version of the truth.
The Fix:
Appoint a cross-functional IBP lead (often from supply chain or finance), create shared KPIs, and focus on decisions—not just data. Use collaborative tools that enable transparency and engagement across teams.
4. Excel Still Runs the Process
We get it. Excel is familiar. But it’s also static, manual, and error-prone. It can’t handle real-time collaboration, constraint-based modeling, or scenario simulations at scale.
Most mid-market companies hit a ceiling with spreadsheets long before they reach IBP maturity.
The Fix:
Start small—introduce purpose-built planning tools that plug into existing systems without replacing everything. Focus on use cases like inventory optimization, what-if simulations, or demand-supply reconciliation that show fast ROI.
“Organizations that rely heavily on spreadsheets for planning experience 30–40% longer decision cycles.”
— Gartner, “Future of Supply Chain Planning,” 2023
5. Leadership Wants Results… Yesterday
Let’s be honest—executives are often sold a version of IBP that sounds like magic. So when results don’t appear in 3 months, momentum fades.
But IBP is a journey. The companies who succeed are the ones who prioritize progress over perfection and invest in sustainable change.
The Fix:
Set clear milestones. Share early wins. Build maturity over time (see our upcoming Crawl, Walk, Run blog). And manage expectations: IBP is transformation, not a toggle.
Conclusion: Barriers Are Real—but So Are the Benefits
IBP can sound like a big-company initiative—but it’s not. It’s a better way to run your business. And for mid-sized companies who want to grow with confidence, reduce firefighting, and link planning to performance, it’s more accessible than ever.
The key? Don’t let the challenges stop you. Understand them, plan for them, and build your journey one step at a time.
Up next: Do You Really Need IBP—or Just Better S&OP?