After nearly 20 years
of APO DP organization have alternative from SAP; SAP IBP for Demand
Many organizations
have already implemented APO DP or third party Demand Planning tools. Many opted for third party Demand Planning so
called best of breed tools.
Overview APO Demand Planning
DP form part of the
APO SCM suite that was launched nearly 20 years ago.
Simply stated setting
up APO DP requires substantial effort not only to define characteristics that
are planned but the all the relevant key figure , info objects, planning area planning books and data views. This
effort also due to technological constraints; available technology 20 years ago. To support
all this set-up complex macros are required for data calculation and how data
is viewed. Basic data views such as waterfall report require major set-up and
job sequencing.
Once this was done and
handed over usability became a problem whereby planners still used the good old excel to massage data
or totally ignored the DP solution basically copied data from excel into one of
the data views.
One major advantage
offered by APO DP relates to release of forecast to the SNP (Supply network
planning) and PPDS (Production Planning
and Detailed Scheduling) without the need of interfaces which are needed for
third party demand planning tools.
Planner using DP are heavily
dependent on back -office for any variation or flexibility wrt to data views,
data processing.
Data integration
required complex ‘BW’ type update from ERP system to the APO system in order to
get source data.
With all its positive and
negative factors organizations were able to generate decent forecast accuracy.
APO Moving On
SAP has now released an OSS note 2456834 – Transition Guide for SAP APO stating that “SAP APO is partially succeeded by two products: SAP S/4 HANA and SAP Integrated Business Planning (SAP IBP)”. SAP APO will be under general support till 2025 (extended from 2020 earlier) part of SAP Business Suite. Currently SCM 7 EhP 3 is most recent Enhancement Package for APO, there is no guidance for EhP 4 or any future enhancement packs for SCM or APO.APO has mainly 4 sub-modules – DP. SNP. GATP and PPDS. Below figure shows the high-level functionalities of each sub-module and SAP’s roadmap for these functionalities to the successor products. DP and SNP will be succeeded by IBP, GATP & PPDS will be succeeded by similar functionalities in S/4HANA.
IBP is a cloud application and AATP is a new name for functionalities of GATP in S/4HANA. Architecture, configurations, user interface for IBP and AATP are very different w.r.t APO .Hence, transition to successor products should be through new configurations i.e existing APO configurations can not be reused for IBP and AATP in S/4HANA. SAP has also clearly stated in the note that “An automated migration from SAP APO to the successor products is not possible“.
It is also now apparent that the future SAP landscape for customers using APO DP and SNP will need to be Hybrid i.e a mix of On-premise (Core ERP or S/4HANA) and Cloud (IBP).
IBP has been launched few years and many customers have started using it or migrated to it. PPDS has been merged in 1610 release of S/4HANA.Some parts of APO GATP have been made available in 1610 release of S/4HANA and SAP has also provided a road map for AATP as depicted in below figure.
Rule-based ATP (RBA) with substitution functionality of GATP is used by several customers, however, that is not yet available in AATP of S/4HANA. The first version of RBA is expected in 1808 release of S/4HANA.
As of now, APO functionalities are partially available in its successor products S/4HANA and IBP. We need to wait and watch when APO can be fully migrated to S/4HANA and IBP. However, it is very clear now that SAP is recommending to plan for transition from APO to its successor products IBP and S/4HANA.
What is not clear is
the migration path with respect to industry solutions such as automotive, mill,
cable. The assumption is that they will be migrated to relevant space. Cable
solution which utilizes combination of ATP and PPDS will move to SAP S/4HANNA
ATP and PPDS space.
IBP Demand Planning
Firstly IBP demand
planning is about excel therefore good-bye SAP GUI.
The demand planning
tool exploits excel via SAP provided add-on for excel providing user maximum
flexibility to adapt data to different planning conditions.
This implies usability
is based on excel plus additional features that are possible such as setting
graphs and the way data is presented . Furthermore
it does not need complex macro as per APO DP to manage cell; changes , color, text size. Via excel EPM formatting cells can be formatted to
choose desired purpose so that changes are highlighted differ colors, borders, text
size.
Within the same view alerts
are automatically shown in different colours controlled by user and not back
office.
Apart from excel user
will access SAP Fiori;
HTML5 based access via
web browser and is technological adaptive to different dives, laptop, tablet , smart
phone . Via controlled authorization user will access IBP SAP Fiori for loading
data, deciding on forecasting techniques (algorithms) , set up promotional
planning data and viewing analytics.
Furthermore via SAP
JAM used for collaboration, IBP for
demand will be totally integrated so that different teams can progress in efficient
manner the demand management process; historical data review and cleansing, forecasting
review, consensus, market review. The
total integration allows for predefined planning view structured for relevant
teams without wasting time in creating data view. Example ; for consensus planning
there will be a planning view structured
specifically product family, market and in desired time buckets.
Apart from usability,
flexibility in viewing data in within different versions, planning in different
versions user totally independent from back office and system is highly
adaptive to user needs.
ID Demand also has
major improvement offering new forecasting algorithms, furthermore forecasting model can have
multiple algorithms associated so that best fit solution can be determined with
a view in maximizing forecast accuracy.
ID demand also offers
scenario planning; planner can on the fly create a scenario for review with
other teams which is then tailored/ modified and then accepted within baseline
version. This implies not only having
multiple scenario; baseline, upside, downside but ability to create on the fly scenario
(what if promotion lift due to marketing campaign) which are then reviewed with
the collaboration tool.
Possible APO to IBP migration
So invested million in
APO third party; what next ?
Incentive to migrate
to IBP is the following:
- Current APO DP solution not providing real business benefits, poor forecast accuracy due to its design, usability, rigidity and lack of forecasting algorithms.
- End of APO support 2025. C
- Consolidate third party tool to IBP Demand Planning with a view exploiting IBP Demand , S&OP and Control Tower
