Warema streamlines collaboration for 200 users across multiple business units

An essential component of corporate management is the internal income statement. With the help of sophisticated cost center planning, Warema tracks the costs and budgets of its various business units. However, its existing planning solution was no longer suitable for a dynamic organization. The solution was too rigid, difficult to administer, and could not adapt to new requirements quickly enough. Inputting data was also too complex and lacked the performance capabilities they needed, placing a time-consuming burden on the planners.

The central controlling department decided to look for a powerful software with a high degree of adaptability. The solution needed to map the demanding cost center planning with internal resources, so changes to the planning model and regular software updates could be carried out easily.

The controllers also wanted to manage the planning environment and implement any necessary adjustments independently, without external consulting. Therefore, the goal was to find an integrated business planning solution with a focus on personnel, investment, and overhead cost planning, in which processes and data flows could be modeled and integrated with the team’s current systems.

Consulting with BARC helped guide Warema’s software evaluation process. In the next step of the process, the pre-selected software providers were tasked with performing various tasks to demonstrate their capabilities. Jedox met the expectations of the experienced controllers, who can use the software to define data models, rules, workflows, as well as extract, transform, and load (ETL) connections themselves. The performance of the powerful database was also a key advantage.

Warema selected Jedox to create an intuitive planning environment that is both efficient and transparent. The project team was able to map the personnel, investment, and overhead cost planning, along with their individual requirements, in consistent data models. The team’s biggest challenge was the high level of detail and numerous calculation rules required for personnel planning. Personnel costs are planned in a granularity comparable with the actual reporting. Manageable and understandable input masks were designed in Jedox so that users can enter their data easily and without lag time.

Other unique subplans, such as material cost and capacity planning, are currently being created in Excel and imported into Jedox to create a planned income statement. Because of the seamless integration between Excel and Jedox, the controlling team can gradually expand to fully integrated business planning for all brands within The Warema Group as needed.

Starting in October, Warema prepares a forecast for the current year and a budget forecast for the following calendar year. Approximately 200 users work with the new system in the active planning phases.

Day-to-day operations and collaboration between planners and controllers have improved significantly. The time-consuming meetings between controlling and planners, which focused only on data entry, are no longer necessary. Instead, they have time for joint analysis and interpretation of the data. This allows controllers to concentrate more on their role as business partners.

The feedback from users is consistently positive, with the biggest change perhaps being the most inconspicuous: When entering data, they no longer notice the system’s powerful computational capabilities operating in the background. They quickly find their way around, enter their data, and receive timely results.

Most importantly for Warema, they have achieved standardized planning. Cost planning in Jedox runs with consistent data in homogeneous structures, and Warema has an updateable system that the controllers can adjust as needed.

Because the project was so successful, Warema plans to implement additional planning modules within Jedox. Controllers can now explore fully integrated business planning.