Several businesses from various industrial sectors have long been running their mid- to long-term strategic planning via the standalone SAP APO solution provided in separate on-premise servers for supply chain management.
However, as many of us are already aware, SAP APO will eventually be phased out. SAP has introduced SAP S/4HANA with embedded PPDS (ePPDS) and SAP Integrated Business Planning (SAP IBP) to revolutionize how current businesses manage supply chain planning and operations, providing seamless integration to core processes and enabling efficiency, agility, scalability, and quick responsiveness.
With the advent of SAP S/4HANA, there is no native long-term planning functionality that matches the Capable-to-Match (CTM) features currently offered in SAP APO. SAP IBP for response and supply is the new, cloud-based tool that manages Demand and Supply Network Planning (DP/SNP) for mid- to long-term horizons, similar to what on-premise SAP APO offers. It also provides other enhanced functionality to address constraint-based planning for long-term strategic planning.
In order to smoothly transition all SCM functions (DP/SNP, PPDS, S&OP) and other ERP functions (PP, QM, MM, WM/EWM, FI/CO), businesses need to make the very crucial decision to perform this transition in one go and smoothly. Since these functions are the heartbeats of SCM, failing to properly handle the transition could cause major disruption and eventual monetary loss. In the majority of the projects I have worked on, businesses are reluctant to transition their entire SAP system (SCM and other ERP) into SAP S/4HANA while simultaneously implementing SAP IBP via the big bang approach. Their reasoning is that it’s not viable, as there are several factors that play a role in making such a giant transition a success.
Instead, businesses are more willing to follow a staggered approach to roll out existing ERP/SCM functions into SAP S/4HANA and SAP IBP—as they gain enough confidence in each solution, they add more. Such a staggered approach for transitioning SCM functions to the new suites means you need to have robust integration between existing mid- to long-term planning (SAP APO) and short-term planning & execution (ePPDS).
In this article, I’ll provide the possibilities you can follow to navigate through this critical transition.
What Is Capable-to-Match?
Capable-to-match (CTM) is a subcomponent of SAP APO’s SNP that handles mid- to long-term network planning; matches demand to supply; and accounts for feasible resource capacity constraints across a supply network of plants, distribution centers, VLC locations, subcontractors, and vendors to build/procure the required product. Since there’s no equivalent tool that matches these overall functionalities in native SAP S/4HANA, it’s crucial to leverage existing CTM functions prior to executing short-term Production Planning & Scheduling activities with ePPDS in SAP S/4HANA.
Functional ePPDS Limitations
Since SAP S/4HANA is designed to utilize SAP IBP and other external cloud-based planning applications for long-term planning, it does not support a straightforward solution to integrate SAP APO’s CTM and SAP S/4HANA’s ePPDS. To be precise, there is a standard integration through CIF between the two systems, but it has some critical limitations, which I’ll discuss now.
No Native Multi-Echelon Network Planning
Unlike SAP APO CTM, ePPDS does not natively support multi-echelon, network-wide, constraint-based matching of supply and demand across multiple locations and stages. SNP and CTM functionalities for multi-site, network-level optimization is not part of ePPDS.
Focus on Site-Level Detailed Scheduling
ePPDS is primarily designed for detailed scheduling and capacity planning at the plant or resource level, rather than long-term global supply chain optimization.
Please refer to SAP Note 2712349 for SAP’s recommendations on best practices and SAP Note 2666947 for SAP S/4HANA PP/DS restrictions.
Fixes
To address these gaps, below are the common approaches to utilize. Note that these require custom development and/or additional licensing needs for API integrations.
Production Planning Optimization (PPO) in ePPDS
SAP S/4HANA 2021 supports finite bucket-oriented planning results to time continuous production planning, while also considering finite capacity. Please note that PPO in ePPDS is primarily for plant-level or limited network tactical planning and does not provide the full network-level, order-based, multi-echelon planning that CTM offers.
Middleware/APIs
SAP Data Services can be used to map CTM results to feed ePPDS compatible data supported by third-party middleware through a custom integration.
SAP Cloud Platform Integration can be used to automate seamless data transfer between SNP and ePPDS.
CIF Integration
You can perform CIF integration with regular, frequent CCR reconciliation and CPP reports for post processing of records to make planning data consistent prior to scheduled batch runs for long-term planning. Please note that this action requires manual intervention to reconcile data inconsistencies generated through planning-relevant events created through routine, daily demand/supply changes.
Functional Workarounds for Integration
Orders generated in ePPDS cannot be transferred back to standalone SAP APO. You should plan all SNP strategic long-term planning activities exclusively in SAP APO. Then, sync orders created or updated in SAP S/4HANA prior to CTM or the SNP run.
You may minimize the CTM run frequency from daily to weekly (if possible), since it is only meant for long-term, rough-cut planning. This allows the minimal manual intervention needed for manual reconciliation of updated PPDS orders/requisitions prior to the long-term planning run in SAP APO.
Try to replicate the data from active planning version “000” to the simulative version designated for CTM. This allows you to capture a weekly snapshot of the demand/supply situation to execute strategic long-term planning in SAP APO.
Make sure to publish the results from standalone SAP APO to SAP S/4HANA. SNP orders must be within the PPDS horizon for conversion to work. Adjust the horizons in transaction settings if needed. Alternatively, orders can be created as a PPDS order type prior to publishing.
Post conversion, use ePPDS tools (e.g., planning board or optimizer) for scheduling. Please note ePPDS cannot create new planned orders during optimization.
By following this approach, you enable end-to-end integration from SAP APO SNP network planning to SAP S/4HANA ePPDS execution, minimizing disruption and leveraging each system’s strengths.
Since I discussed considerations only for SAP APO CTM, I also would like to emphasize the same limitations/workarounds can be applied for all standalone SAP APO SNP planning engines: Heuristics, Optimizer, etc.
Conclusion
Ultimately, while SAP S/4HANA and SAP IBP are the future, SAP APO CTM will continue to play a vital role in long-term planning until full adoption is feasible. These strategies aim to minimize disruptions during the transition, preserve critical planning functions, and allow businesses to gradually harness the benefits of SAP S/4HANA and SAP IBP’s continuous innovation in supply chain planning.
On the other hand, apart from integration challenges between standalone SAP APO and SAP S/4HANA, SAP APO lacks the continuous innovations that SAP IBP brings to the table. Since SAP APO functionalities are being replaced with SAP IBP’s constrained based, priority-driven supply planning to match demands (among other features), I recommend that you adopt SAP IBP sooner rather than later.
This post originally published in 8/2025.
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