Everybody Talks About Integrated Business Planning. Almost Nobody Actually Does It.

By Michael Bouloubasis, Head of Supply Chain at Confido

Michael spent more than four years at Chobani, rising from S&OP analyst to Senior Demand Planner managing over 60% of the portfolio. He then joined incredifulls as its first hire and built the supply chain processes from scratch, first as supply chain manager and later as VP of Operations. He joined Confido in 2026 to lead supply chain.

Every vendor promises integrated business planning. Every ops leader says they're working toward it. But there's a lot of distrust around IBP, and I understand why. I've watched teams get handed an IBP system and keep doing what they were already doing in Excel.

I've been on both ends of this. I've planned at a big company with a team for every piece of the supply chain, and at a four-person brand where I was the supply chain. The tools were different. The problem was the same.

The system goes live, but the team still doesn’t move from spreadsheets.

At my last big company, we were rolling out a big-name IBP suite. Nobody believed in it. The supply planning team never bought in, and the general feeling was "this is a bunch of nonsense, I'm just going to keep doing what I'm doing."

Even with serious software in place, a lot of the work was still manual. To get promotions into the plan, we took the lift for every single one, put it in a file, and uploaded it by hand. Sales forecasts lived in an Excel sheet that every sales manager was supposed to go in and update. Asking a sales team to keep a giant spreadsheet updated is a tough ask. They'd rather be selling. So, oftentimes, the forecast was only as good as whoever remembered to update it.

That's the part nobody puts in the vendor deck. You can buy a great system, but if the process isn’t there it just won’t work.

What it’s like when the whole supply chain is a single point of failure

When I joined a small brand as hire number one, I did demand, supply, procurement, and logistics. The demand plan was simple based on the amount of data of a small growing brand where a moving average made more sense. The hard part was everything around it.

Pulling the data took forever. Inventory from each warehouse. Sales orders and history from an ERP. There was a different file for every distributor and customer. Every time we added a SKU, I had to add it on every tab. Lead times weren't written down anywhere. They mostly lived in everyone’s heads.

The plan would change…constantly. A material would show up a week late. The co-manufacturer would skip a day to run another customer's product. A big one-off retailer order would come in and I'd have to get materials and scheduling lined up fast. Reprioritization happened almost daily. Our ERP had a planning worksheet that was supposed to help, but it kept breaking, so more often than not I would end up re-doing the whole plan in excel, which could take a full day.

Not being in the green on my numbers was a constant fear. If I didn't get materials ordered in time, the co-manufacturer would come back with, "How am I supposed to produce for you?" And if orders didn't ship, there was no one else to catch it. If my execution was not perfect, the product would not be on the shelf. A dangerous problem for a small CPG brand.

I do understand why planners hold on to Excel. When the plan changes every day, you need to be able to change a number fast. What we actually wanted was all that data in one place, and a system that told us what we needed instead of us rebuilding it by hand.

You want a million units? We can make 750,000

The handoffs are where it breaks. In most S&OP meetings, the demand forecast ends up winning because it's closest to the ground, and then it gets blended up a bit so nobody reports too low. Then it goes to supply, and supply says, "You want a million units? We can do 750,000." Now you're deciding whether to cut the plan or bring on another co-manufacturer or warehouse, after everyone already agreed on the number.

When that loop is slow, you feel it…

• Service levels: Retailers like Walmart track on-time in-full and will charge you, or drop you, if you fall below their line.
• Cash: Too many days of supply means your cash is sitting in inventory that isn't moving.
• Waste: In dairy, you have about 90 days of shelf life to work with. I've handled the waste myself, donating it or selling it off, and built reports just to catch at-risk product before it expired. Companies budget for waste because they know it's coming.

Supply chain rarely gets a pat on the back. If you're at 100%, that's just what it should be. Slip 10% and everyone wants to know what went wrong.

Connecting the plan, piece by piece

IBP isn't one big switch. It's sales, demand and supply working off the same numbers, so changes show up where they need to before they become a problem.

That's what we've built at Confido. Trade promotion, sales forecasting, demand planning and supply planning all live in the same platform:

• Promotions flow right in: Gone are the days of pulling lifts into a file and uploading them. The demand planner sees the promotion and the assumptions behind it.
• Sales has a live place to update: The sales work automatically flows into the demand plan, especially for new items where numbers move the most.
• Demand drives supply. Your demand plan flows straight into your supply plan, connected to your ERP, with lead times, minimum order quantities and safety stock stored in the system so they don't live in someone's head.
• The reports are already there: On-time in-full, days of supply and inventory projections come built in, not one more spreadsheet each.

Trust still matters. Most teams start by running Confido alongside their old process, watching the numbers match, and then letting the spreadsheet go. That's usually when it clicks.

I've sat in both seats. I've been at the big company with the big system nobody used, and at the small brand where I rebuilt the plan by hand every week. Confido is the tool I wish I'd had in both. It won't run your S&OP meeting for you, but it takes away the excuses. When trade, sales, demand and supply already live in one place, your team stops reconciling numbers and starts making decisions.

If you're a growing brand still running your plan out of spreadsheets, you don't have to wait until you're big enough for an IBP overhaul. Build it right from the start.