Data Integration with IBP is Fun. Old school SAP APO used CIF (Core interface) primarily to move data from ECC to APO. CIF was useful for SAP APO SNP for SAP APO demand planning process the data interrogation process involved Data Source > Info Cube > Transformation > DTP > Info Package etc. With IBP the Data transfer process has inclined towards the BW/BI process, the new structure is know as CPI-DS (Cloud Platform Integration – Data Source). The structures involve similar flow like Data-source definition, Transformation, lookup, joins etc. The likeable part is the speed CPI-DS has; Gigabytes of data can be extracted from system to system in seconds. Along with speed it also brings strong data processing skills before the data is loaded in the target system

Close to CIF in IBP is SAP Smart Data Integration (SDI) which can be used for order based planning. This part of IBP is know as IBP response. IBP responses basically matches SAP APO CTM. Separate licensing is needed to activate IBP response. For Demand Planning and SNP planning engines Optimizer and Heuristics CPI is till the primary tool for data extraction. With CPI-DS capability IBP becomes more flexible in its ability to connected non-SAP system and lots of option related to data massaging.

The Project Tab shown is the above tab is the prime tab where all the flow is defined. Flow Starts with the creation of Task > Select Data Source (Non-SAP system like Excel) or SAP systems > Add Data Source.