The disruptive emergence of integrated business planning

The aim of this paper is to present the topic of integrated business planning and place it in the current environment of the supply chain, logistics and distribution sectors and against the backdrop of increasing technological change. The aim is to make the reader think about the speed of innovation happening around us and the importance of harnessing new technology to improve analysis and planning within the realms of an organisation’s business processes, so as to make faster and more accurate decisions. It is based on the author’s understanding and experiences on this topic, which have been obtained by visiting and talking to many domestic and global retail, distribution and logistics organisations and trade bodies in the UK. It is not intended to be a highly researched/academic paper. Because of the confidential nature of engaging with organisations, most of the examples given are well known and in the public domain, but the general trends and information reflected in the paper are based on the author’s experience of the status of decision making in organisations. The observation made is that despite the advancement of technologies in the personal environment, in larger organisations, decision making is disconnected, less collaborative, slow and inefficient, with hours spent gathering data as opposed to using the time to analyse it. In the current environment of economic and operational turbulence, the author would like to raise awareness of a better, faster, more accurate way of making decisions by challenging the current organisational decision-making processes and technologies used.