Streamlined

According to a recent BARC study 89 percent of companies – regardless of size, region or industry – agree that markets and competition are constantly becoming more dynamic, which requires adjustments to corporate management, including planning and forecasting, to meet growing requirements. This results in growing competitive pressure driven by innovation, complexity and changing social and political conditions.

Those surveyed identified a variety of driving forces for organizational adaptation. Over half (59 percent) surveyed claimed it was due to technological progress and digitalization, while 53 percent stated heightened and individual customer preferences were the drivers. 46 percent said it was due to environmental responsibility while 45 percent pointed to global competition was the main driving force.

Regardless of the reasons, the need for agility has risen across all industries. Decision-makers can no longer look to the past to determine future outcomes. The secret to effective facility management lies in predictive analysis based on forecasting and budgeting toward the future.

Despite the need for smart financial technology to streamline processes, only 41 percent of companies update their forecasts and projections at least once a month to account for changed market signals for corporate management. Without sound software support, this high frequency cannot be handled efficiently and quickly enough to derive insights for decision-makers. Increasing dynamics lead to declining value derived from classical annual planning and budgeting. Therefore, a high degree of automation is needed to update forecasts quickly and efficiently.

Spreadsheet suffocation

Drowning in over a thousand Excel files annually, one FM group sought to streamline its reporting processes. The company has 17,000 employees, oversees operations for 31 companies in 26 countries using 13 different currencies operates worldwide. The driving force behind the company’s adaption was a clear need to consolidate their financial data into one easy-to-use platform.

Previously, management accounting created reports for the group entirely in Excel. With up to five reports per company each month, that meant controlling, evaluating and processing up to 1,300 Excel files each year. Suffocating in a sea of spreadsheets, the company realized its manual tasks and lack of central database were too error-prone and time-consuming. One of the key drivers of digitalization meant the time had come to replace Excel with a modern BI solution for standardized, efficient reporting.

Management accounting evaluated various solutions and found a powerful enterprise performance management (EPM) solution to offer the most flexibility. The software fulfilled all requirements for international reporting as well as enterprise planning and other applications planned in the future. They built a web platform for financial and sales reporting based on the solution. With the support of a consultant, it implemented the system quickly and conducted the international rollout on their own. The intensive product training, particularly in ETL and other technical matters, was very helpful. The department can now manage the data and, therefore, the entire application internally.

The benefits of streamlining

The software supports automated currency conversions and transfers local accounting standards into common P&L structures. These features save the team a great deal of time and ensure reliable results. Another advantage is the automatic generation of follow-up reports.

Previously, management accounting spent an entire day preparing the report data. Today, they can compile and export this data in the required XML format with just a click. Some power users also work with an Excel add-in as an analytic front end. Business users value the comfortable web access, analytic capabilities and functions to drill through to individual orders. Management now has a current overview of incoming orders and the current order status. Sales can access current regional business development reports on demand. Previously, it took two weeks just to gather the data from the individual countries. Now it takes minutes.

To the Finnish line

Finnish government enterprise Senaatti needed a new financial planning solution that would replace its previous error-prone spreadsheet-based processes, to enable scenario modelling and integration with its data warehouse to create a single version of the truth across the organization. As the Finnish government’s enterprise responsible for the management of the state’s extensive portfolio of real estate assets across the country, the organization manages some 9,000 buildings, including government ministries, research facilities and cultural institutions, defense and security sites, as well as a diverse mix of office buildings – collectively representing around €4.2 billion of real estate assets. In addition to providing a streamlined property asset management service, Senaatti aims to provide a governmental working environment that not only helps to improve employee performance, but also supports the government’s strategic goal of saving over €100m a year in office costs by 2022.

Increased budgeting, forecasting and planning complexity was placing intense pressure on its financial budgeting systems. To deliver the performance and agility required by the organization’s evolving business needs, Senaatti deployed an EPM solution to address those needs.

Key business challenges

Senaatti provides its property users with a comprehensive range of office management support services, helping them to make better use of their working environment and save space costs. The organization faced key challenges. Its evolving work environment was placing considerable pressure on its financial management team and systems. A range of different Excel-based spreadsheet templates were being used to support their budgeting and planning needs. However, these proved time-consuming to operate, were error-prone, and couldn’t be integrated across the business.

Key factors behind the decision were the solution’s ease-of-use, removing the risks involved in using error-prone spreadsheets and saving administrative time; its tight integration with the agency’s data warehouse and its ability to join different planning processes together to provide a single version of the truth across the organization.

The solution

Senaatti immediately began budgeting and planning with its new integrated planning solution, and the system is now supporting some 120 users across Finland, including real estate managers, regional managers, financial business controllers, heads of internal units and customer managers.

Implementing a new solution helped the organization achieve a range of efficiency improvements, including:

• optimized financial planning by replacing its previous time-consuming spreadsheet-based planning processes to cut the time taken to produce plans and forecasts by half.

• simplified reporting and consistent information by automatically integrating with the its data warehouse to enable more productive and seamless reporting workflows across the organization.

• created effective budgeting across the business through the solution’s ease-of-use and user-accessibility across the business

• removed complexity to create budgets via the web interface.

The last year has seen trends in the EPM space that address the drivers calling for change. Effective digital transformation in FM has only just begun. Companies without integrated data will be sorely left behind. Luckily, there are solutions available to make life a lot easier despite the conditions the world is currently facing.