smart Europe uses Jedox for flexible corporate management

As a newly established company, smart Europe initially managed its reporting using Excel but quickly reached its limits with this approach. Long process times and a high potential for errors due to many manual tasks did not align with the agile nature of the company.

Expanding into new markets, introducing new smart models, adapting to regulatory and tax changes, undergoing internal restructuring, and meeting new reporting requirements from its parent company are all part of the day-to-day business at smart Europe. The Financial Planning and Analysis team needed to respond flexibly and be able to provide reliable figures for corporate management at any time.

Therefore, the FP&A team sought a professional software solution for the fast-growing company. Standardization and automation were needed to speed up planning and reporting processes, relieve controllers, and improve data quality. At the same time, the system had to be flexible and controllable by the specialist department.

The controllers chose Jedox as a reporting platform, which, with its Excel compatibility, simple development environment, and powerful database, matched their requirements profile precisely. Jedox is also ideally suited for planning and simulating complex business models at smart Europe due to its strong performance.

Led by the Controlling & Risk Management department and supported by Jedox partner Advanced Applications, the team implemented comprehensive financial controlling in several project phases—covering topics such as budgeting and fixed costs, profit and loss (P&L) statements, financial planning, and monthly closing in Jedox.

Manageable sub-projects

The implementation began at the end of 2021. In the first project phase, the business case for sales was transferred to Jedox and set up as the basis for business decisions within the company’s formation. From this point on, Jedox became the foundation for strategic pricing decisions in the sales business.

In the second project phase, from November 2022 to July 2023, the data model was restructured to expand the areas of application. With separate data cubes within the Sales Use Case and the newly introduced Budget Steering Use Case, reporting structures have become significantly more flexible.

The sales application from the first sub-project was adapted to this new structure to enable the urgently needed operational sales planning with P&L projections in Jedox with expanded functionalities. Advanced Applications mapped a sales use case developed specifically for smart in Jedox.

Due to the complex calculations involved, extensive custom development was required. Additionally, a module for monthly accruals was developed in the new Budget Steering Use Case. With a team of six consultants and developers, Advanced Applications successfully launched these demanding applications on schedule.

Since August 2023, these use cases are continuously developed, and new use cases for topics like cash flow and after-sales are being designed. Due to the high level of automation in budget planning, mid-year planning cycles with actuals and forecasts have now been established as part of the year-end process. The continually refined monthly and annual closings also provide a reliable foundation for reporting to the parent company and the internal executive board.

Building internal knowledge

During the joint project work, Advanced Applications, as an authorized Jedox training center, continuously built knowledge within the internal team. They trained two employees in Controlling & Risk Management to become certified Jedox experts and still support the smart Europe team as a coach—though full development responsibility now lies entirely with smart.

The rollout of the Jedox platform is continuously progressing. Today, users across Europe from controlling and accounting, as well as cost center and budget managers, can access Jedox.

Project Manager Benedict Sonnenschein emphasizes the high transparency of reporting processes and key figures as a significant advantage of the Jedox solution. For example, when preparing the monthly closing, automatic reports and workflow visualization ensure error-free and traceable data collection. It’s always clear in the process status who reported which data and when. Automatic input controls and regulated access rights ensure a high level of data security.

Simulation and versioning at the push of a button

The central Jedox database creates a common data basis for planning and reporting, synchronizes data, and enables data set history and versioning. smart Europe uses this powerful database for complex simulations of business cases.

Benedict Sonnenschein provides an example: “A simulation in Jedox enables the simultaneous creation of profit and loss statements with different planning approaches for various organizational levels, such as smart Europe or individual markets, in different currencies.”

The company’s leadership frequently asks the controlling team to model changes to various parameters and variables in business cases to see their impact on P&L. How would a price discount for a model over a particular period affect P&L in the B2B or B2C segment? What would be the impact of new tax or regulatory requirements? What happens if prices and sales increase in a specific region?

Today, the FP&A team can reliably answer these ad-hoc questions much faster than before. The time required to create a P&L statement for Sales has been reduced by approximately five working days with Jedox. The fixed-cost monthly closing is also available around five working days earlier. This means the up-to-date figures allow for timely management and form a reliable basis for decision-making for the executive board.

The Jedox solution evolves along with our growing organization.

Benedict Sonnenschein, Strategic Controller, smart Europe GmbH

Internal development

Now, specialist departments can independently implement frequent adjustments to regular planning and reporting. Controllers adapt master data, report structures, calculations, business logic, and processes to the growing organization themselves.

The Controlling & Risk Management team is already working on and planning the next expansion steps. These include sensitivity analysis of the P&L statement, inventory planning & depreciation, after-sales and cash flow use cases, and linking Jedox with other systems. For instance, sales figures from departmental software applications are expected to feed directly into Jedox. Gradually, Jedox is set to replace more Excel spreadsheets.