Towards an Integrated Business Planning at Company X

Company X is a specialized, international player in the area of storage systems, from manual to fully automated storage systems. At this moment, the organization deals with scattered and not linked planning processes. Each department has their own planning process and system. Since these do not interface with each other, the likelihood of introducing mismatches and planning mistakes is big. The planning processes are labor-intensive, not linked to an overall process and difficult to understand. This situation makes the management of a project difficult. There is no overall tool in use to harmonize the planning data. This makes forecasting and reporting a difficult and labor-intensive activity. Therefore, it is necessary to examine the contribution of an integrated business planning in their multi-project environment. The goal of this research is to provide Company X with an advice and conceptual framework. With this, we provide Company X a solid base of how to integrate their business processes into one integrated business planning. To give a solution to the problem and realize goals, we formulated the following main question: ‘’To what extent and in what way can an Integrated Business Planning contribute to the value chain of Company X within their multi-project environment?’’