Sales and Operations Planning (SandOP), also called Integrated Business Planning (IBP), is a business process that integrates business plans from different functional areas of a firm to balance supply and demand of products in a mid-term planning horizon, thus supporting the horizontal integration of the firm. S(and)OP/IBP also serves as a bridge between strategic and operational plans, thus supporting the vertical integration of the firm. Although this process has gained prominence in the area of supply chain management, the expected benefits at the time of implementation have not yet been fully realized in practice by the industry. Moreover, the literature indicates the need for a complete characterization of the process and that a reference model would benefit process users. To address these research-practice gaps, this dissertation elaborates a preliminary reference model structure for the S(and)OP/IBP process, based on academic papers, white papers written by practitioners, a case study in a Brazilian chemical industry and the application of focus group with S(and)OP/IBP experts. This work contributes with an empirical study on the theme, as well as it offers a preliminary reference model structure, evaluated by practitioners of S(and)OP/IBP, which can be used as a guidance for firms willing to design or improve their own process and for academics in future researches with the aim of refining it. In addition, 13 points of attention to be assessed by practitioners are presented in order to mitigate the impacts of differences between contexts.