Customer Success Story
768 monthly Excel reports replaced by Jedox
Zertus has been a food entrepreneur since 1826. Zertus, one of the oldest family companies in Germany, is headquartered in Hamburg, where it operates as a holding company for four market units with twelve subsidiaries in Germany and abroad, which produce and market high-quality foods and beverages. With its own product development and production, professional quality management, a state-of-the-art distribution center and administration in Hamburg, the Group today employs a workforce of around 2,300 people.
Challenge
Swapping Excel reports for a scalable business analytics platform
Zertus Holding is gradually implementing integrated business planning with Jedox. The organization started using Jedox in 2021, when the software was first introduced to the finance department. They had been using Excel for their reports but had decided to switch to a professional business analytics solution.
Working with stakeholders in their subsidiaries, the central Controlling department defined the criteria for a new solution. They needed a user-friendly system that different departments could pick up and use independently without having to rely on the IT department for support. The team wanted it to be possible to gradually add to the solutions being developed and roll them out across the group of companies. With six ERP systems in use, it was also crucial that multiple data sources could be integrated with ease.
After exploring different solutions, Zertus decided to go with Jedox. The strong planning features, modular approach allowing for the step-by-step development of comprehensive applications, and the Excel-friendly plugin were exactly what the Controlling department had been looking for.
Another selling point was the extensive support on offer when implementing Jedox. Zertus appreciated the focus on coaching and the multilingual service support provided by Jedox, which streamlined the implementation across international subsidiaries. Some stakeholders had already had positive experiences with Jedox too.
Solution
Gradual implementation for guaranteed project success
Zertus Holding takes a systematic approach to integrated business planning through a carefully considered overarching strategy. Progressing projects in manageable steps is the key to quickly achieving success.
Initially the holding company is focusing on data management for group reporting and financial planning. Financial planning is being implemented, starting with individual modules like HR planning, cost center and project planning, capital and operational expenditure planning, and service cost allocation for the subsidiaries, which feeds into P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow planning.
The Controlling department at Zertus prepared thoroughly for the creation of the corresponding data models and mapped out the dimensions in Excel themselves. Jedox took over at the Extract, Transform, Load (ETL) stages and developed the planning templates. It only took a day and a half to upload the prepared dimensions – a pleasantly quick start to the project for the project manager at Zertus.
The first step for data management was extracting data from Excel. Even at this early stage, Jedox replaced 768 Excel-based monthly reports previously being used by the group. The second step involves the creation of a data warehouse that automatically draws on data in the ERP systems to form a central data source for reporting across the organization. Additional specialist planning modules will be introduced as a third step to extend the scope of the integrated planning. Examples include sales and purchasing for operating subsidiaries.
The gradual rollout across the group is ongoing too. To start with, Jedox is being introduced at the holding company and two subsidiaries. Once the modules have been successfully implemented within the pilot companies, they will be rolled out systematically. Jedox is managing all the subprojects and ensuring that one consistent solution is in place across the international group of companies.
Outcome
More efficient and transparent planning
Gradually developing integrated financial planning is opening up many potential synergies for follow-on projects within the group. The degree of standardization and scalability offered by Jedox allows modules such as cost center planning to be copied and multiplied across the organization. Human resource planning introduced a pre-configured Jedox planning model based on FTEs. For P&L, the results from the basic modules are collated while preserving full transparency about the data sources.
Zertus is happy with the project progress after the implementation of the first modules. Standardization and automation make planning so much more efficient at cost center, account and project levels. At the same time, the quality and security of the data has improved.
Planners are finding the proposed values, generated using actual and budgeted values, and direct collation in the system hugely helpful. This allows Capex planning to include an automatic report of depreciations per investment at cost center level. Human resource planning on an FTE basis uses global parameters to calculate incidental wage costs and takes into account the specific bonus structure modeled in Jedox.
“Jedox has improved planning accuracy and saves us a day and a half each month on generating forecasts for the holding company.”
Philipp von Arnim, Division Manager Group Controlling & Accounting, Zertus Group/Zertus GmbH
Workflow support is also having a very positive impact on the decentralized planning process. The cost center managers each use their planning modules and submit the data, and the workflow monitor enables the holding company to keep track of the planning status. For the project managers, a major benefit of planning in Jedox is the transparency of the process and the origin of the planning data.
