What is Unified Business Planning?

Unified business planning (UBP) is the systematic answer to the inefficiencies and difficulties in aligning supply chain commerce operations with traditional medium-term planning like sales and operational planning (S&OP) and short-term planning like sales and operational execution (S&OE).

The problem with S&OP and even S&OE is that once execution starts, exceptions begin, and the plans grow stale. Even S&OE is just too slow and too disconnected from the execution systems.

To truly optimize supply chain management across planning and execution, in real time, the planning systems can’t just talk to the execution systems, they must listen to them as well.

Manhattan Active Supply Chain Planning is the world’s first solution engineered to do just that. Built on a shared cloud native platform with Manhattan’s omnichannel and supply chain execution systems, it will seamlessly and continuously coordinate with WMS, TMS, OMS. Manhattan Active SCP ensures enterprise wide KPIs like lowest Total Landed Cost can finally be achieved by dynamically adjusting inventory, distribution, labor and transportation plans in concert with each other.

Why Now?

Today, consumers demand instant, personalized experiences across every shopping channel. Yet, legacy supply chain systems remain siloed, creating disconnected operations, inefficient inventory placement, and higher costs. And the relentless pace, doesn’t just affect direct-to-consumer organizations, either. If you're a consumer brand, consumer goods company, 3PL, or a distributor, you feel it too. It surges up the supply chain, compressing wholesale ordering and manufacturing timeframes, compelling everyone to make smaller, quicker, and more agile shipments.

A Better Way to Plan

Most planning systems today have roots in the store-centric era, when the digital consumer didn't exist, and we had plenty of time to process a nightly batch of store replenishment and wholesale orders.

But the modern world is customer centric, and legacy planning processes are too long, too slow, and too disconnected from the supply chain execution systems.

When it comes to inventory, it must be where the demand is. There’s just no time for anything else. The in-efficiencies of disparate planning and execution systems, can no longer be hidden from the modern consumer.

As an industry, we must create inventory speed, just like we created execution speed, compressing planning cycles to the point they are effectively, continuous.

The Only Solution

Only Manhattan Active Supply Chain Planning is truly unbound from traditional planning processes and legacy system architectures. It unlocks new possibilities for inventory optimization.

It’s the only planning solution to unify demand forecasting, replenishment and allocation on a single, cloud-native platform.

It’s the only solution, with bi-directional collaboration across OMS, TMS and WMS. Not only does it continuously talk to the execution systems, but it also listens to them as well.

It’s the only solution engineered with the right microservice APIs, to collect and combine external trends with internal patterns, and the AI horsepower to process it in real-time.

It’s the only solution that can continuously optimize, and re-optimize, inventories, labor, and transportation into a single plan.

And because of all that, it’s the only solution that can fully align every resource and system, to a common enterprise goal.

Unify Everything

Just imagine you’re a home goods retailer, where you are constantly testing the latest designs for hard-surface flooring, in various regions.

When market response is strong, you need to get all your resources, systems and suppliers aligned quickly, to convert that trial product to a regular assortment.

Now, you don’t have to go back and dig out the inventory plan to change it. Manhattan Active Supply Chain Planning is the plan.

Simply flip the switch from push allocation to ongoing replenishment.

Immediately sourcing begins for more product. Transportation knows all about the new shipments. Labor knows all about the additional volumes. And slotting starts getting ready to integrate the new inventory into the DC.

Instantaneously, everyone is unified.

So, whether you are a retailer, distributor or manufacturer, if you move goods, groceries, pharmaceuticals or beverages, Manhattan Active Supply Chain Planning was purposefully engineered to unify your business planning and help you make the impossible, possible.

AI Conversations About Unified Business Planning

We discuss Unified Business Planning (UBP), a new approach to supply chain management that addresses the limitations of traditional planning methods like Sales and Operations Planning (S&OP) and Sales and Operational Execution (S&OE).