Successful transformation of a Global Planning Landscape
With SAP IBP for Demand, WAGO is setting the stage for standardized, global processes at 48 locations for over 900 users.
WAGO GmbH & Co. KG connects, measures, controls and networks—worldwide: with simple solutions and intelligent connections. Since 1951, WAGO* has been a reliable partner to industry and passionately embraces the great responsibility it has as a leading supplier in the field of connection and automation technology as well as interface electronics.
WAGO faced the challenge of transforming decentralized and historically grown planning processes for sales, distribution, and capacities into an integrated, efficient, and globally uniform structure. The lack of comparability between financial sales planning and volume-based demand planning, as well as an overall low level of transparency, made reliable decision-making difficult. WAGO therefore decided to introduce SAP Integrated Business Planning (IBP) as the strategic foundation of a modern end-to-end planning landscape.
Successful, global Harmonization of Budget, Demand, and Sales Planning
Project Objectives
WAGO is introducing SAP IBP to harmonize and improve its previously decentralized and opaque sales, distribution, and capacity planning processes.
The goal of the project is to cover all relevant planning processes and optimally integrate them with each other. In the first project step, demand planning was put into operation following budget planning.
Challenges
The following factors placed high demands on processes, technology, and organization in the project:
- Complex, detailed requirements in the demand process, which required precise modeling and high system flexibility.
- Global structures with 900 users at 48 locations that had to be harmonized, trained, and converted to common process standards.
- High demands on transparency, forecast quality, and automation to enable WAGO to implement scalable and data-driven planning in the long term.
The combination of technical expertise, high process competence, and the exceptionally constructive collaboration between CONSILIO and us has led to the successful global harmonization of budget, demand, and sales planning—on time and within budget.
Key Achievements
Among others, the project achieved the following key results:
- Creation of a central demand plan as the basis for all demand decisions
- Automated creation of preliminary planning requirements in SAP S/4HANA, including secure integration and data consistency
- Comprehensive evaluation, analysis, and detailed reporting of planning results across all plants and regions
- Establishment of a regular, harmonized planning process for reconciling sales and demand planning
- Standardized budget planning for the coming fiscal year – globally consistent and transparent
The close collaboration between WAGO and CONSILIO not only enabled the desired goals to be achieved, but also established a sustainable planning architecture that optimally supports future growth.
Next Steps
To create an integrated, future-proof planning architecture, the next steps will involve implementing rolling monetary sales planning with quantity conversion to ensure comparability between volume-based demand planning and sales planning, and finally order-based supply network planning. Capacity planning will be implemented with the introduction of IBP for Response & Supply.
Monetäre Sales- und mengenbasierte Demand-Prozesse im Einklang – für maximale Effizienz und Transparenz mit SAP IBP
Project Benefits for WAGO
- Improved alignment between sales and planning: A monthly rolling process creates transparency, synchrony, and a better basis for decision-making.
- Enhanced forecast accuracy through intelligent algorithms: The automatic selection of optimal forecasting methods, supplemented by an external AI forecast, sustainably increases forecast quality.
- Increased efficiency through automation: Alerts and automated workflows enable focused, resource-saving work and significantly reduce manual effort.
- Professional control of product life cycles: Integrated processes for launch and phase-out control increase planning reliability for product launches and phase-outs.
- End-to-end integrated system landscape: The automatic transfer of preliminary planning requirements to SAP S/4HANA ensures consistent data consistency – from forecasting to operational planning.
