Getränke Hoffmann manages stores with daily updated SAP data

Getränke Hoffmann is the No. 1 chain of specialist beverage stores in Germany. With around 600 locations in the country the company is growing rapidly, fueled predominantly by acquisitions. The company requires significant flexibility in its planning system, with three legal entities and new stores being integrated regularly.

There is also significant complexity in forecasting, due to significant fluctuations in beverage sales depending on seasons, weather, day of the week, major sporting events, and more. This makes it difficult to produce accurate forecasts for store planning.

The growing demands could no longer be met with Excel, so the company was looking for highly adaptable software for planning, forecasting, reporting, and mapping company-wide corporate performance management on a shared database.

Getränke Hoffmann chose Jedox due to its adaptability, its similarity to Excel, and the easy integration with SAP and other business systems. It was also important to Constanze Perlberg, the controller responsible for the project, that she could manage the software solution independently with her team and expand it one step at a time.

With the support of Jedox partner HICO-Group, the team at Getränke Hoffmann implemented a powerful BI architecture and set up an integrated corporate planning system. The main data source is the organization’s SAP system, which includes the cash register data from the stores and merchandise management. In a data warehouse based on a Snowflake platform, the data from various SAP accounting areas converge and is provided in high-performance data models for planning and analysis.

When modelling the data, the HICO Group mapped the company organization in business units, cost centers, branches, and departments. This enables a wide range of analyses, aggregations, and detailed views from a business perspective. Users access the data via Jedox Web or the Jedox Excel Add-in. There are also plans to use Microsoft Power BI as a front end in the future.

Jedox financial models for P&L, balance sheet and cash flow as well as the HR planning model were used to set up the solution. The HICO Group consultants used this as the basis for building a comprehensive company-specific planning model. During the project, the team significantly expanded and deepened the existing controlling. For example, the store structure was expanded to 600 cost centers and cost planning was mapped far more precisely.

Planning, forecasting and reporting

P&L planning is at the heart of the Jedox application. This is based on detailed sales planning with daily sales from the branches as well as HR planning of FTEs, additions and disposals, capacities, and branch openings and closures. Together with cost center planning and investment and project planning, the P&L is built up, from which the balance sheet, cash flow and a complex group cost allocation with multi-level contribution margins and profit and loss accounting across all branches are derived.

In addition to annual budget planning, a rolling 15-month rolling forecast was created. Getränke Hoffmann is also using the Jedox AIssisted™ Planning module to forecast P&L development on a trial basis. The AI module generates default values for sales and costs, which are used for comparison with manual planning. Due to the numerous outliers typical of the industry in the sales business, the automated prediction of turnover is difficult, while the extrapolation of costs provides more accurate results.

The controlling team has gradually integrated the topics of the specialist departments including sales, marketing, IT, and purchasing into the planning model as required. Jedox is also used to generate the monthly reporting for the Radeberger Group as the parent company of Getränke Hoffmann.

Now Getränke Hoffmann has an adaptable system that grows with the company. A wide range of topics and specific requirements can be mapped without programming using the software’s on-board tools. Today new branches are easily integrated into the planning process. The new additions are shown separately to present the Group’s development in meaningful benchmarks.

With the introduction of Jedox, the previous top-down planning in Excel was converted to bottom-up planning. The automated allocation procedure for actual and planned figures, which distributes costs and results to all branches according to stored formulas, is also helpful for management.

“We opted for Jedox because of its similarities with Excel and the flexibility of the system. As controlling and internal processes are constantly growing at Getränke Hoffmann, this was definitely the right decision, and we really appreciate the flexibility of the system. Working on the project is very exciting because of the many opportunities to help shape it.”

Constanze Perlberg, Senior Controller, Getränke Hoffmann GmbH

Senior Controller Constanze Perlberg says Jedox has brought tangible benefits to the organization, including:

• The daily import of SAP data into Jedox enables faster and more flexible analyses.
• The acceptance of the departments involved is high. Excel and copying errors are avoided, and the drill-through function gives the departments much greater transparency of their costs.
• Adjustments to data during the planning processes are immediately visible and accessible to all.
• Reports have a clear added value in terms of appearance and flexibility.
• New requirements can be implemented quickly.