Job Description
JOB DATA
JOB TITLE: Principal Consultant - SAP IBP
DEPARTMENT: SAP Delivery DSC
Experience Required : 12+ years
Shift timings: EST/ CST
Job Summary
We are seeking an accomplished SAP IBP Principal Consultant to drive value-led Integrated Business Planning transformations for global clients. In this role, you will act as a trusted advisor to senior supply chain leaders, guiding solution design, functional excellence, and delivery outcomes across SAP IBP programmes. Operating at the intersection of business process design, planning transformation, and SAP IBP configuration, you will lead workstreams, shape end-to-end planning solutions, and mentor consultants—while collaborating closely with architects, programme managers, and client leadership from strategy through sustained adoption.
Responsibilities
IBP Solution Leadership & Functional Design
- Lead the functional and process design of SAP IBP solutions across one or more planning domains.
- Translate client business objectives, planning maturity, and operating models into scalable SAP IBP solutions aligned with best practices.
- Own detailed design decisions, including planning area design, key figure models, master data strategy, and planning process flows.
- Perform fit-gap analysis and recommend pragmatic design choices balancing standard SAP capabilities and business needs.
- Ensure alignment with SAP IBP quarterly releases and evolving product capabilities.
Delivery Execution & Client Engagement
- Lead or co-lead project lifecycle phases: discovery, blueprint, build, testing, deployment, hypercare, and transition to support.
- Facilitate executive and business workshops across Demand, Supply, Inventory, and S&OP / IBP processes.
- Act as a senior client-facing consultant, clearly articulating value, trade-offs, and implementation implications to VP and Director-level stakeholders.
- Review configuration, functional specs, and test scenarios produced by project teams to ensure quality and consistency.
- Partner with technical architects, integration teams, and SAP Basis to ensure cohesive end-to-end delivery.
Required SAP IBP Module Expertise
Strong hands-on experience is expected across the core SAP IBP functional modules, with the ability to lead solution design and configuration discussions.
Advanced Demand Planning
- Statistical forecasting models (ARIMA, exponential smoothing, causal, MLR).
- Forecast accuracy measurement, bias analysis, and baseline improvement techniques.
- Experience cleansing historical data and improving data quality for planning outcomes.
- Exposure to ML-enhanced forecasting capabilities within SAP IBP.
Response & Supply (R&S)
- Demand-driven supply planning using heuristics-based approaches.
- Multi-echelon supply network modelling and configuration.
- Planning area and key figure hierarchy design supporting complex supply networks.
Optimizer
- Hands-on experience with SAP IBP Optimizer for supply, demand, or inventory optimisation.
- Understanding of constraints, objective functions, priorities, and optimisation KPIs.
- Ability to explain optimisation behaviour and outcomes to business stakeholders.
Order-Based Planning (OBP)
- Order-based supply planning concepts: pegging, firming, prioritisation, and exception handling.
- Integration touchpoints between IBP OBP and ERP order management / execution systems.
- Experience positioning OBP versus heuristic-based planning with clients.
Required Skills
Deep, hands-on implementation experience is required across all five core areas below.
Advanced Demand Planning (Statistical Modelling)
- Statistical forecasting: model selection (ARIMA, exponential smoothing, causal), MLR, and error metrics.
- Experience tuning forecast models, cleansing historical data, and improving baseline accuracy KPIs.
- Understanding of machine-learning-enhanced forecasting options within SAP IBP.
Response & Supply (R&S)
- Demand-driven planning, heuristics-based supply run, multi-echelon supply network design.
- Hands-on experience configuring supply network models, planning areas, and key figure hierarchies.
Optimizer
- Constraint-based optimisation using SAP IBP Optimizer (supply, demand, or inventory objectives).
- Familiarity with optimisation model configuration, constraints, objective functions, and KPI design.
Order-Based Planning (OBP)
- Order-based supply planning: MRP-like logic, pegging, firming rules, and order handling in IBP.
- Experience with integration touch-points between OBP and ERP order management.
- Custom dashboards and analytical apps.
- Hands-on SAP BTP Build Work Zone.
- SAP Business Application Studio (BAS)/Web IDE.
- SAP Gateway and backend integration.
Qualification & Education
- 7–10+ years in SAP supply chain planning
- 3–5+ full-cycle SAP IBP implementations
- Leading functional workstreams or modules
- At least 2 industries (e.g., CPG, retail, pharma, manufacturing)
- Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Supply Chain, or related field (MBA a plus)
- Strong workshop facilitation and executive communication skills
- Proven success working in multi-vendor, cross-functional project teams
Nice-to-Have Skills
- SAP IBP for Business Planning (xP&A) exposure.
- S&OP / IBP process design and facilitation experience.
- Financial integration with SAP BPC or SAP Analytics Cloud.
- Familiarity with SAP BTP extensions or side-by-side enhancements.
- Exposure to competing planning platforms (Anaplan, o9, Kinaxis).
- SAP IBP certification.
About Us
Argano is the first of its kind: a digital consultancy totally immersed in high-performance operations. We steward enterprises through ever-evolving markets, empowering them with transformative strategies and technologies to exceed customer expectations, unlock commercial innovation, and drive optimal efficiency and growth.
Argano is an equal-opportunity employer. All applicants will be considered for employment without regard to race, color, religion, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, national origin, veteran status, or disability status.
