Principal Consultant - SAP IBP

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 experienced SAP IBP Solution Architect to lead the design, delivery, and continuous improvement of end-to-end Integrated Business Planning solutions. Operating at the intersection of supply chain strategy and technology, you will translate complex business planning requirements into scalable, best-practice SAP IBP architectures — while guiding clients or internal stakeholders from discovery through go-live and beyond.

Responsibilities:

Solution Design & Architecture

• Own the end-to-end architecture of SAP IBP implementations across one or more planning domains.
• Define data models, integration patterns, and system landscape for IBP deployments within an SAP S/4HANA or hybrid ecosystem.
• Translate business requirements into functional and technical solution blueprints, including fit-gap analysis and design decisions.
• Establish best-practice configuration standards and ensure alignment with SAP's quarterly release roadmap.

Delivery & Stakeholder Engagement

• Lead or support full project lifecycle activities: workshops, blueprint, build, testing, hypercare, and handover.
• Engage C-suite and VP-level supply chain stakeholders; present architectures, trade-offs, and recommendations with clarity.
• Mentor and review the work of functional consultants and junior architects on project teams.
• Coordinate with SAP basis, integration, and data engineering teams to ensure end-to-end solution integrity.

Practice Development

• Contribute to practice assets — accelerators, templates, methodology guides, demo environments.
• Stay current with SAP IBP product direction and bring insights back to the team and 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:

• 8+ years in SAP supply chain planning; 4+ years as Solution Architect
• 5+ full-cycle IBP implementations (at least 2 as lead architect)
• Exposure to 2+ industries (e.g., CPG, retail, pharma, manufacturing)
• Bachelor's degree in Engineering, Supply Chain, or related field (MBA a plus)
• Ability to present technical architecture to executive audiences
• Proven track record leading cross-functional, multi-vendor teams

Nice-to-Have Skills

• SAP IBP Business Planning (xP&A) 
• SAP BTP / extension development
• Financial planning integration (BPC / Analytics Cloud)
• Anaplan, O9, Kinaxis or competing tool knowledge
• S&OP / IBP process design & facilitation    
• SAP certification in IBP or related modules