Top 5 New Features of SAP IBP 2208
We are just about mid-way through summer, and the SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) quarterly upgrade is here. Supply chain talk is hotter than the heat wave at this point with businesses still attempting to rebound from the effects of the pandemic. But all is not gloom- today, we bring you 5 cool new features released by SAP in the 2208 IBP upgrade to help brighten up your day.
1. Receipts Balancing with Lot Size Parameters
IBP will now allow managing supply with lot size more efficiently in the next upgrade, providing you with additional options for receipts balancing. First off, the parameter in the S&OP operator profile has now been renamed to Receipts Balancing Policy which gives you a drop down along with others to “Consider Lot-Size Parameters”. When selected, the infinite heuristic will consider any production receipts that a source additionally created and reduce that from the open demand to avoid excess supply created due to lot-size.
2. Native excel sorting and additional updates to Excel Planning UIs
If you’ve tried to use native excel sorting in the SAP IBP Add-in for Microsoft Excel Planning UIs, you know IBP did not like that and would not let you do anything with that data set other than look at it. With IBP 2208 upgrade you will be able to not just sort, but update the data without having to refresh the view. Additionally, the planning view will also now extend the native filters to new attributes or time periods if you edit the view. Another enhancement added to the Excel Planning view is the “Show details” option which is available when you right click on a Key Figure or other elements in your planning view. A window opens showing the tool tip for further information of the element.
3. Upgrades to External forecasting
In the previous upgrade (SAP IBP 2205) SAP released the external forecasting capabilities. This enabled forecasting with custom external algorithms where the pre-processed data is sent to an external customer system to compute forecast and received back via OData into IBP for post-processing. In this upgrade (2208) you can also bring in additional externally calculated data like Confidence interval and save it in an output key figure. The functionality also now enables external pre-processing. For example, if you would like to define custom algorithms for outlier correction in an external system, you can send the data back to IBP after pre-processing and use it into the built in pre-processing or forecasting steps further.
4. Improvements to Change History Analysis app
Change History Analysis app has come a long way, and the improvements in IBP 2208 will make it a lot easier to use. Most importantly, the app will perform faster with how data is now processed in the background using an asynchronous job. A progress bar will also show up if it takes longer than 5 seconds for improved visibility. Additional changes are the ability to use absolute and relative filters for time including a time stamp. With relative filters you can now filter using offsets to the time filter.
5. Enhancement to Simulate Key Figure Calculation
In the previous upgrade SAP IBP introduced the Simulate Key Figure Calculations app. This tool helps to check the correctness of the Key Figure calculations and test new calculations without activating the planning area. In the 2208 upgrade this app will now allow manual entry of data for Stored Key Figure values within the simulation. The live data is not changed in the system and non-changed key figure values can be refreshed within the simulation. This is a very handy tool especially during the phase of configuration.
These are just 5 of our favorite enhancements with the 2208 upgrade. There are many other exciting new features that didn’t make the list but may be able to help make your business more efficient. If you have any questions about the upgrade, IBP in general, supply chain processes, and more; we are always excited to hear from you.
