What is Integrated Tactical Planning?

09 Nov 2023

Blog

There has been an enormous amount of literature published about Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP), and more recently Integrated Business Planning, espousing their benefits and the need for a formal monthly decision-making process in all businesses. However, unless plans are properly managed and coordinated most S&OP and IBP processes end up stuck in the short-term (one-to three months), and senior managers get dragged into firefighting. This is where Integrated Tactical Planning (ITP) can help.

What is Integrated Tactical Planning?

ITP is an essential cog in fully realising the power of integration. It is a tightly orchestrated weekly and daily set of processes, designed to manage the execution of the monthly Integrated Business Planning plans as efficiently as possible. The successful deployment of ITP will define and calm the process of management and communication in the execution window, bridging the divide between the various functions within the organisation, and ultimately leading to improvements in customer service, inventory levels and other key metrics.

You should consider Integrated Tactical Planning for your business if:

Your IBP process is stuck in the short term
Regular crisis and emergency meetings consume senior managers’ time
There is an intense focus on delivering this month’s numbers
There is a culture of not following the plan because customer requirements ‘keep changing’
Customer delivery performance is less than 90% on time
Inventory seems to have a life of its own
Everyone seems to have a view of the future, but there is no ‘single source of the truth’
Purchasing is making ‘best guesses’ on long-lead-time items – often with costly errors
Everyone is blaming inaccurate forecasting as ‘the problem’
There have been many initiatives to fix ‘the problem’, but results seem to slide back once the ‘project’ is completed.

One of the most common reasons these symptoms occur, even in companies that have deployed an IBP process, is that IBP is seen as the panacea for all planning and execution problems – but it is not. IBP cannot work in isolation; its role is to help plan the medium-to-long term and the process requires ITP to ensure that these plans are executed. This, in turn allows senior managers to spend their time on longer-term decision-making.

To find out more, download our free white paper, or, for more in-depth knowledge, get a copy of our Integrated Tactical Planning book.

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