NEWS: Oliver Wight Seminar Reveals Executives Lack Planning Ambition

London, United Kingdom, April 1, 2016 (Newswire.com) - The poll, conducted at the exclusive Oliver Wight thought-leadership seminar on ‘achieving business transformation through Integrated Business Planning’ in London on 1stMarch, revealed that almost a quarter of delegates (23%) claimed ‘improved forecast accuracy’ was the biggest benefit for their business when IBP was implemented, while only 7% had seen an increase in revenues.

The sample also revealed that improvements in customer service, better supply planning, reduction in inventory and improved demand-to-procurement all scored highly. Oliver Wight CEO, Les Brookes, believes this shows senior executives are not demanding enough from their planning process and they don’t recognise its true potential.

Never give up, you must continually strive to reach the perfect planning environment and make sure you take the value from every step along the way.

Paul Archer, Partner at Oliver Wight EAME

“Often the motivation for implementing an Integrated Business Plan is just to improve processes rather than to transform the business. The objectives are typically set by supply chain around inventory and supply planning, which are not exciting for the business leaders, so they don’t get involved at the outset” he says.

The seminar, jointly hosted by Oliver Wight partner Paul Archer, showed that once management starts to see the true benefits of IBP coming through, far more impressive results are possible. “With realisation at the top, that means IBP can actually be used to run the entire business, ambitions are often recalibrated and growth of 10-15% is possible through the use of IBP in the proactive closing of business performance gaps.”

Archer identified three things that need to be addressed for the right ambition to be set and for transformation to be achieved through successful business planning implementation. First and foremost, the relentless pursuit of the business strategy is key to success. “Never give up,” he says. “You must continually strive to reach the perfect planning environment and make sure you take the value from every step along the way.”

Secondly, to deliver the experience and value customers require. And lastly, inspiration is essential; by “inspiring internal teams to get behind the process, the whole business will work towards a single goal and see transformation delivered across the board,” claims Archer.

40 delegates from 30 companies across Europe - retail, service, FMCG, pharmaceutical and manufacturing attended the event at the Radisson Blu hotel, London Heathrow. Using the findings from the research, and the knowledge and advice from the Oliver Wight consultants, delegates were encouraged to set greater ambition for the success of implementing IBP to deliver business transformation.