Contributions from the Congress Exhibitors
Our Exhibitors present their practical solutions
The challenge
Due to its group structure, the international retailing company METRO faces many challenges when it comes to mapping changes in corporate law. In order to achieve more flexibility and to increase the degree of automation, the listed company replaced the previously used consolidation solution.
With the introduction of CCH Tagetik, METRO has been able to optimize the consolidation steps, significantly shorten the financial reporting process, and is now able to respond much more flexibly to finance requirements through simulations and scenarios.
Read all about the objectives and the solution here
About CCH Tagetik
Wolters Kluwer (EURONEXT: WKL) is a leading global provider of information, software solutions and services for healthcare, tax and accounting, governance, financial and corporate compliance, legal and regulatory, and corporate performance and ESG professionals.
Wolters Kluwer achieved annual sales of 5.6 billion euros in 2023. The Group serves customers in over 180 countries, has branches in over 40 countries and employs around 21,400 people worldwide. The company is headquartered in Alphen aan den Rijn in the Netherlands.
Wolters Kluwer provides corporate performance management software that enables CFOs and their teams to manage their business and execute their financial strategy by making faster, more informed decisions.
The proven, comprehensive, AI-powered CCH® Tagetik Intelligent Platform streamlines financial close and consolidation, advanced planning, ESG and regulatory reporting, and corporate tax. With its open and extensible technology, CCH® Tagetik connects financial and operational data with operational solutions to gain enterprise-wide information and insights.
Management Summary
Progress and potential for digitalization in controlling departments
- The majority of controllers are moderately satisfied with the level of digitalization in their department. Parallel challenges in day-to-day businessare hampering progress.
- Only a few of the companies already use AI. A frequently mentioned Use case is sales forecasting. With RPA it is clearly more companies, reporting is a is a frequent field of application.
- The most frequently cited challenge is personnel resources, followed by a lack of expertise and difficulties in prioritizing projects.
- The involvement of employees is cited as an essential success factor. Other factors include the gradual introduction of changes and dedicated teams.
- The degree of digitization of planning and reporting varies greatly between companies. However, the visions are similar. For many, the processes are partly digitalized and partly manual.
- In the future, controlling will be a partner to management for strategic control. This requires intelligent use of data and communication skills.
Read the complete study here (PDF)
About Frankfurt School of Finance & Management
Frankfurt School of Finance & Management is Germany’s leading private business school for qualification, training and consulting in all areas of banking, finance and management. Frankfurt School actively embraces the principle of lifelong learning and promotes personal and professional development at all career levels.
With over 65 years of experience in the field of executive and professional education, the portfolio is one of the broadest in Germany. The continuing education programs provide participants with scientifically sound knowledge paired with practical know-how and support them in transferring the specialist and management knowledge they have acquired into practice.
The Centre for Performance Management and Controlling carries out practical research work. The focus is on future-oriented performance and corporate management, the development of innovative concepts in the field and the transfer and exchange of knowledge through community building. As a scientific partner of the continuing education programs for CFO specialists and managers, the CPMC contributes up-to-date content and is heavily involved in teaching.
The challenge
Bavaria Film GmbH, one of the leading production and service companies for film and television, needed more efficient and transparent financial planning. The previous sub-planning – film projects, investments, cost centers, internal cost allocation, HR and contribution margin – ran in separate legacy applications, which led to data inconsistencies, time-consuming reconciliations and inefficient processes. In addition, the fragmented planning made it difficult to gain a consolidated view of the company’s overall financial situation. Cash and liquidity management in particular posed a major challenge, as financial resources had to be optimally distributed and bottlenecks had to be identified at an early stage. In addition, flexible versioned and daily updated project controlling needed to be made possible.
Solution with H&Z.digital and the planning tool Board
To meet these challenges, Bavaria Film worked closely with H&Z.digital to implement an integrated financial planning platform based on the planning tool Board. This solution combines all relevant financial applications and automates important process steps and workflows, reducing coordination efforts and significantly increasing transparency.
Core components of the solution:
- Harmonization of all sub-plans for consistent and uniform management.
- Automated workflows that eliminate redundant processes and increase efficiency.
- Real-time dashboards that provide management with up-to-date financial data at all times and facilitate data-based decisions.
- Flexible scalability to seamlessly integrate future extensions and customizations.
- Improved data quality by linking relevant financial information in a standardized environment.
- Use of the Board planning tool, which enables centralized control and detailed analysesComprehensive project control via multi-year planning of revenue recognition and cost allocation
- Optimized liquidity management by consolidating and strategically planning all cash flows.
- Effective cash management to make targeted use of financial resources and avoid bottlenecks.
Result
With the introduction of the new financial planning platform, Bavaria Film was able to achieve significant improvements:
- Seamless integration of all financial areas in a centralized platform.
- Increased transparency thanks to the ability to monitor financial flows in real time and generate automated reports.
- Increased efficiency, as manual and redundant processes were eliminated, which significantly reduced the workload for Controlling.
- Optimized decision-making through improved data availability and consistent analyses.
- Better collaboration, as different departments have access to a standardized database and can therefore work more effectively.
- Improved liquidity management to ensure financial flexibility and manage strategic investments in a targeted manner.
- Optimized cash management to efficiently manage operational and strategic cash flows.
- Daily project controlling to effectively manage long-term projects and simulate planning scenarios flexibly and fully integrated
About the H&Z Group GmbH
H&Z.digital GmbH is a specialized management consultancy and innovative solution provider for digital transformation, business intelligence and integrated financial planning. With a unique combination of technological know-how and business expertise, H&Z.digital supports companies in making their processes more efficient, transparent and agile.
The range of services includes data analysis, automation, reporting & planning and change management. As a strategic partner, H&Z.digital supports companies from analysis and design through to implementation – in a practical, agile and results-oriented manner.
H&Z.digital provides tool-independent advice, but relies on powerful solutions such as Microsoft Power BI, SAP Analytics Cloud, Qlik or Board to enable companies to develop an optimal, customized financial and data strategy.
H&Z.digital takes a holistic approach to digitalization – with the aim of sustainably strengthening companies on their path to the future.
To the company page
Vaasan Ltd, a traditional Finnish baker, optimizes its production with the support of Intito. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Intito helped Vaasan respond quickly to increasing demand with IBM Planning Analytics. The solution improves energy consumption forecasting, cost analysis and long-term sales planning. Thanks to Intito’s step-by-step implementation, Vaasan was able to efficiently automate processes and optimize strategic decisions. The close collaboration enables Vaasan to benefit from the latest IBM technologies, keeping the company more flexible and competitive.
About Intito
Since 2014, Intito has been pursuing the idea that “great people with the right tools can revolutionize the way our customers work”. The approach combines outstanding software expertise with specialist knowledge and a business-oriented mindset – from needs analysis to measurable results. Transparency and humanity are at the heart of this, both in our dealings with employees and with our customers.
The model inspires the pursuit of common goals, with growth occurring organically. From the outset, values were emphasized and a culture of intelligent collaboration was created that flourishes without personal compromise.
Today, Intito’s experts are active in Finland, Sweden, Norway and the DACH region and support companies in Europe and worldwide.
CHALLENGE: Planning with several hundred Excel files
Telekom Deutschland used to primarily use Excel for its planning processes. Hundreds of planners created detailed operational plans and financial plans in several hundred individual Excel files. However, this tried-and-tested method was resource-intensive and lacked transparency. With the “Digital Planning” strategic project, Telekom Deutschland therefore gave the go-ahead for the introduction of a new, integrated planning platform in 2022.
Telekom Deutschland invested a lot of time in the software evaluation. Around 30 controllers from the specialist departments were involved in the multi-stage selection process as future key users. After evaluating several providers, the controllers decided to introduce Jedox. The decisive factors were the ease of use and the software’s proximity to Excel. The high system performance, the flexibility of the planning modeling and the no-code environment, which requires no programming knowledge, were also important to the controllers.
SOLUTION: Switching planners from Excel to Jedox
Instead of a top-down implementation, the “Digital Planning” project primarily pursues a bottom-up strategy: the switch from Excel to Jedox is largely left up to the planners. Initially, there are deliberately no specifications for data model structures. Instead, the controllers can create the models they need themselves in Jedox. The central project team then consolidates similar master data in the next step and makes it available as a standard.
Excel and Jedox are used in parallel in this migration strategy, and the Excel integration of Jedox makes it possible to create simple transitions between the systems at any time. For example, follow-up processes of Jedox planning can be edited via the Jedox Excel add-in, or data from Excel can simply be imported into Jedox. In data management, the project team takes on the task of identifying central upstream systems and setting up the interfaces. The departments also have the option of automating the uploading of Excel and CSV files to Jedox if no interface exists yet.
OUTCOME: Jedox as a success factor in digitization projects
The bottom-up strategy with Jedox is proving to be a complete success. In the meantime, 25 use cases are already live and 25 more are in progress. 500 users had registered in Jedox as of June 2024 – this means that the number of users has doubled since the beginning of 2024.
The head of the Digital Planning project, Susanne Neubauer, states: “Jedox is gaining traction. We are constantly receiving new inquiries from teams who want to work with Jedox.” The benefits of standardization and automation quickly became tangible: “We are seeing a huge leap in efficiency with Jedox because the database-driven platform eliminates the need to manually transfer information. Planning is significantly accelerated in workflow-controlled processes.”
The planners receive full transparency about the status of the planning and the administration effort is significantly reduced. The teams are also enthusiastic about the automation potential of Jedox Integrator and the high performance of the data calculation. It is also important that short-term changes to the planning parameters in the central data models are now possible quickly and easily.
Telekom Deutschland will continue to digitize its corporate planning in stages. The full integration of use cases is on the agenda from 2025. In this phase, AI-supported forecasting processes will also be implemented to help planners.
Read the complete article here (PDF)
About Jedox
More than 2,900 companies in 140 countries rely on Jedox to model any scenario in the areas of corporate planning and performance management, integrate data from a wide variety of sources and simplify planning across organizations and systems.
For over twenty years, Jedox has supported global organizations with expertise and German precision with the Jedox platform, adaptable modeling solutions and commitment. Jedox has been recognized in both the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Financial Planning Software and the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Financial Consolidation and Close and was named #1 for Competitiveness and Flexibility in the Global Peer Group in the BARC Planning Survey 2024.
In manufacturing companies, meeting market and consumer requirements is crucial. However, ever faster changing customer requirements are pushing conventional, integrated product structures to their limits and leading to increasing complexity and costs. How can companies capture and reduce these complexity costs?
The article presents the results of the workstream “Cost of Complexity” of the Northern Europe Modularization Network (NEM). The study investigated how increasing complexity affects variable and structural costs in practice. Based on the methodology of value stream mapping, a systematic approach was developed that enables companies to develop targeted strategies to minimize complexity costs – without losing the advantages of modular product design.
Read the complete article here (PDF)
About NEM
The North European Modularization Network (NEM) is a network in which companies can share their experiences without competition, improve their knowledge and skills in the field of modularization and support each other on their individual paths of transformation and growth. Within the network, we meet at eye level and learn from each other – both from successes and challenges in the implementation of modularization.
NEM has more than 2000 person-years of experience in modularization, making it the world’s largest known knowledge base in this field. The network includes over 30 renowned companies (e.g. Volvo, Electrolux, Atlas Copco, Velux, Danfoss, Trumpf and Körber). In addition, there are partnerships with several universities and consulting companies, such as the TU Hamburg, the Fraunhofer IPA and the ICV. This valuable basis is used to organize meetings, conferences, projects, workshops and working groups as well as to provide access to relevant publications and work results.
The challenge
An international industrial company was faced with the challenge of adding an AI assistant to its existing BI platform.
The company was looking for a solution to enhance reporting, planning and forecasting with classic machine learning and to make the company’s knowledge available to end users in addition to the facts. Communication with the AI was to be embedded directly into the reports and analyses via natural language as a chat function to enable intelligent decision-making based on real-time data.
Solution through Next Vision
Next Vision GmbH implemented its AI Assistant into the company’s existing infrastructure to connect IBM watsonx and Microsoft Power BI .
- Automated reporting & analysis: With the help of Microsoft Power BI, dashboards were developed that integrate and visualize data from various sources in real time.
- AI-supported forecasts: IBM watsonx analyzed historical company data and enabled precise forecasts for turnover, sales, price and contribution margin.
- AI Assistant for Business Solutions: The integration of an AI-supported assistant makes work easier for end users and controllers by combining facts and knowledge and providing intelligent recommendations for action.
Result
The solution led to better integration of company knowledge, a significant reduction in manual controlling processes and more accurate forecasting. Managers had a transparent and well-founded basis for decision-making at all times, allowing the company to react more flexibly to market changes.
Conclusion
This case study shows that modern technologies such as IBM watsonx and Microsoft Power BI can revolutionize controlling. AI-supported solutions enable companies to work more efficiently, make quick decisions and ensure future-proof management of their business.
About Next Vision GmbH
Next Vision GmbH, founded by Patrick Söhlke, specializes in analytics & BI as well as data science, ML & AI. As an IBM Build Business Partner and Microsoft Partner, the company offers classic BI solutions such as IBM Planning Analytics and Microsoft Power BI. Next Vision GmbH also relies on IBM watsonx as the leading AI platform for SMEs. With over 20 years of experience and more than 100 successfully implemented projects in industry, trade and the public sector, the company is driving digital transformation forward. An in-house lab environment enables research and development for our AI Assistant for Business Solutions as a practical AI platform for various use cases.
QUNIS implemented a data warehouse at Melitta Single Portions and has been supporting the operation and further development of the cloud solution ever since. With “QUNIS Care & Run”, the young company receives professional all-round service and can concentrate more on expanding its innovative business model.
Since 2019, Melitta Single Portions has positioned itself on the market for single-serve tea with its Avoury® brand. At the same time, the company completely redesigned its IT landscape “on a greenfield site”, including a data warehouse as the basis for reporting and corporate management.
BI Manager Angela Musić-Siedler, who initially worked on the topic alone, brought QUNIS on board as an experienced consulting and implementation partner in 2019. The new data warehouse went live the following year with the first reports for management and all departments.
Since then, QUNIS has accompanied the internal BI team in a cooperative partnership: a QUNIS consultant supports the ongoing development of the data warehouse and reporting. With the Care & Run service package, the IT experts from QUNIS also ensure stable, efficient operation of the system environment and provide competent support.
Read the complete practical report here (PDF)
About QUNIS
QUNIS is a full-service provider for data and analytics projects. V on Data Strategy, Data Engineering and Data Operations.
Our consulting services range from company-wide data strategy, the introduction of data governance and the anchoring of self-service analytics to the development of modern data lakehouse architectures and the design and implementation of clear data visualization concepts. From the use of AI to training your teams and setting up a data & analytics operating concept.
QUNIS provides support from the development of the strategy and roadmap through to implementation and sustainable anchoring in the organization. In terms of technology, QUNIS relies on Microsoft, SAP, Databricks and Dremio, its own process models and frameworks as well as proven open source technologies.
QUNIS is active in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, has its head office in Brannenburg, near Munich, and is represented by experts at over 25 locations throughout Germany, Austria and Switzerland.
New perspectives for CFOs & controllers with Sage Ai
The report “AI for CFOs: Smarter Decisions” shows how artificial intelligence strengthens finance teams, makes processes more efficient and enables better strategic decisions.
AI: the big opportunity for financial managers
86% of CFOs are already using artificial intelligence. The report shows how AI can be integrated into finance and how workflows can be made more efficient with smart AI finance tools.
Practical tips help to find the right AI solutions, convince stakeholders and ensure successful implementation.
About Sage
With cloud-based tools, AI-supported efficiency and automation, Sage offers digital solutions that enable companies to optimize their accounting, HR processes and business processes – agile, transparent and sustainable.
Customer benefits
- Establishment of the functional and technical cornerstones of global controlling governance for effective corporate management
- Conception and introduction of first-class approaches to increase comparability and transparency within MAHLE, e.g. through the development of a lifecycle controlling approach – from quotation calculation to standard calculation to actual costs
- Development of a hybrid, integrative approach to operational planning in SAC and S/4HANA in co-innovation with SAP as the foundation of optimized corporate management for a rapid response to changing conditions in volatile markets
The company and the project
- MAHLE GmbH
- Automotive supplier from Stuttgart
- 12.8 billion euros turnover
- 3 Business areas
- 700 employees
- 148 production sites
- MORE (MAHLE Optimized Real-Time Enterprise) as a global SAP S/4HANA greenfield transformation
The challenge
Adaptability, flexibility and the ability to constantly evolve and change offer decisive competitive advantages. Companies are facing global challenges resulting from changing political and social circumstances – be it trade and customs disputes between economic powers, the impact of geopolitical tensions on supply chains and energy prices or increasing pressure from environmental and social standards.
At the same time, the digital transformation requires continuous adaptation to new technologies, while rising energy prices and the scarcity of raw materials are forcing companies to make their business models more resilient and sustainable.
As a leading global supplier group in the automotive sector, whose market and corporate success has been based on the development and production of combustion engine components for decades, MAHLE recognized these developments at an early stage and, with its Strategy 2030+, has taken measures to future-proof the company and its business model and to manage them effectively in volatile times. The core of MAHLE’s future strategic orientation is the strong expansion of the existing product portfolio in the areas of electromobility and thermal management.
From the outset, the aim of the growth strategy in these areas was to scale up quickly, generate competitive advantages and economies of scale and secure a global leadership position. Strategic acquisitions and inorganic growth resulted in a heterogeneous process and IT system landscape and, as a consequence, a non-transparent information and data situation. This initially made it extremely difficult to manage the company as a whole in a globally consistent and effective manner.
A heterogeneous cost structure of similar products, for example, prevented meaningful profitability analyses at customer, location and product level and harbored the risk of invalid location and portfolio decisions, distorted offer calculations and business cases as well as ultimately lost development projects. Even during the phase of accelerated growth and strong dynamics, the focus at MAHLE was therefore already on the standardization and scalability of business and controlling processes as the basis for transparency and control capability.
The solution approach
With the global S/4HANA Greenfield project, MAHLE is creating the basis for the company’s urgently needed transparency and management capability – the organizational change is followed by the digital and process-related transformation with the introduction of SAP S/4HANA.
The key success factor of the project is the holistic approach, which is aimed at the central goal of process standardization, consistency and controllability and considers business requirements and benefits in an integrated manner with technical functionalities. The global controlling business concept was developed in an overarching project team of controlling experts and IT – with the support of the SET Management Consulting expert team – and is currently being rolled out worldwide with the elements of cost center controlling, profit center controlling, product cost controlling, project and investment controlling, profitability controlling, reporting and operational planning.
The core of the concept and the basis for the rest of the project is a management model geared towards the business model and sustainable growth. Standard processes, structures and allocation and calculation logic are based on the management logic and ensure global transparency and comparability of profitability across all business areas. The introduction of a product lifecycle controlling approach will also enable profitability analyses across all phases of the entire product lifecycle in future, resulting in well-founded and profit-maximizing location, project and portfolio decisions.
With the help of implemented deviation analyses, free capacities can already be taken into account in planning through anticipated volumes and capacity utilization can be proactively optimized worldwide. The basis for this: Flexible standard costing on a full-cost basis – it may sound like a German theorem, but it is essential for capacity utilization and variance analysis, especially when claiming against customers.
In addition to process optimization and transparency gains in the production area, standard processes and value flows also lead to valid statements about indirect costs and efficiency potential in the overhead area.
Another milestone and success factor for MAHLE’s future management and flexible ability to respond to changing conditions is the hybrid and integrated planning approach in SAC and S/4HANA for operational planning and product costing developed with SAP in a co-innovative approach, which allows innovative planning functionalities of the cloud solution to be used, but also integrates the assumptions, costs and quantities for product costing in S/4HANA
The result is a globally consistent process template adapted to the changed corporate context – independent of business unit and region, which enables the MAHLE Group to be managed as a single unit and thus increases competitiveness.
About SET Management Consulting
The company supports the financial sector as a competent partner in order to fully exploit the potential of digitalization and successfully implement transformations.
To the company page
The ROSEN Group is a leading global provider of advanced technical solutions. Active in over 120 countries, the Group implements innovative technological solutions for the inspection of industrial plants in the energy industry to ensure safe and reliable operation to the highest standards for the protection of people and the environment.
OUTPUT SITUATION
- Time-consuming and tedious merging and maintenance of large Excel sheets.
- Ensuring good data quality and up-to-dateness was a challenge.
- Different sub-plans continuously led to coordination efforts.
- The focus was on comparing partial plans and analyzing deviations.
- The analysis came up short, the derivation of management decisions was challenging because data interpretation was discussed instead of analyses and recommendations for action.
- The planning cycles were long. There was a lack of flexibility and speed of response.
- The call for a professional, integrated system with high user acceptance was loud.
PROJECT GOALS
- A fully integrated system with connection to all data sources and networking of all sub-plans with an impact on financial planning (sales/distribution, procurement, production, delivery/service provision) for the entire group.
- Acceleration of the budget process: continuous planning with the option of incorporating adjustments directly. This provides optimum support for management decisions.
- Improvement of data quality and up-to-dateness.
- Fast response to changing partial plans, including adjustments during the year and flexible, easily configurable scenario/bandwidth planning with value drivers.
SOFTWARE SELECTION AND PROJECT IMPLEMENTATION
- 2022: Development of a 5-stage plan: Go Live planned for 9/2023.
- December 2022 to March 2023: Software selection with exact requirement lists and demo appointments with 5 providers on the longlist.
- January 2023: Implementation of prototype capacity planning with ROSEN company data by smartPM, another 4 providers show their solutions.
- April-May 2023: Proof of concept with 2 providers (shortlist): Testing data model and connection, user management, dashboards, license model, support, flexibility.
- May 2023: Unanimous decision in favor of smartPM.solutions. Start of implementation of capacity & resource management, cost center planning, data connection.
- June 2023: Implementation of financial reporting.
- July/August 2023: Implementation of cash forecasting and test phase of the system, implementation check whether all requirements are met.
- September 2023: Go-live of planning exactly according to schedule for all planners/users.
FULLY INTEGRATED PLANNING AT THE ROSEN GROUP
- Legal planning of the German units: Cost centers, project, personnel, CAPEX, investment, P&L with different planning cycles, so that we do not only plan on annual slices as in the past, but continuously, during the year. The plan is updated continuously and scenarios can be differentiated in the flexible system.
- Based on this, the hourly rates are derived from the planning and balance sheet figures (development of working capital during the year).
- Integration of legal entity planning and sales planning with order intake planning and sales and profit center planning.
- Automation of the linking of sub-plans for a fully integrated system. A change in the subplan shows the effect on the other subplans (sales, cost planning, etc.).
- The end result is a fully developed xP&A with a coherent picture of future development for the entire Group.
Read the complete case study here (PDF)
About smartPM.solutions
smartPM offers intelligent controlling and planning solutions that combine analysis, financial planning, forecasting and reporting in one integrated platform.
- Fast implementation – ready to go in 6-12 weeks
- Automated scenarios & forecasts with AI for precise decisions
- Seamless integration & objective software selection (SAP, Power BI, IBM, Jedox & more)
- Self-service analytics & AI for maximum transparency
- Flexibly scalable – from ESG, project controlling & S&OP to the entire company
- Practical expert knowledge – advice from experienced controlling specialists
- Optimized processes & data-based decisions with intelligent planning solutions
- 25 years of project experience & high customer satisfaction (4.8/5 stars)
