QNNCT - UK Edition by Finext

QNNCT PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT MAGAZINE

HIGH TECH HIGH TOUCH

SOPHISTICATED PLANNING AT BOOKING.COM

5 QUESTIONS FOR THE CFO OF BOSKALIS

SMART METERS AT ALLIANDER

STATISTICAL FORECASTS SUPPORT THE RAPID GROWTH

HANS KAMPS SHARES HIS VISION ON THE FUTURE OF FINANCE

GETTING TO GRIPS WITH THE ROLL-OUT TO THREE MILLION CUSTOMERS

The quarter close never looked so good

Simplifying Financial Consolidation, Planning, Data Quality & Analytics.

OneStream Smart CPM Platform:

Unified all-in-one platform Reduced close time Eliminate risk & complexities Quick and easy product upgrades Download free XF MarketPlace solutions directly into the SmartCPMâ&#x201E;˘ Platform to extend the value instantly

HIGH TECH OR HIGH TOUCH?

Technology is inseparable from our everyday existence nowadays. Smartphones, contactless payment or selfscan supermarket technology: we get used to it quickly. And often we’re no longer able to remember what it was like without it. Is the new technology a positive development, or does it pose a threat? That depends on how you handle it. I recently interacted with a robot receptionist, for whom a friendly lady must have had to make way. The reception process wasn’t much more efficient, and was definitely not so personal. Don’t get me wrong: I’m certainly no Luddite. I’m virtually wedded to my iPhone, my car is hybrid electric and I shop online – but there are simply some domains where I still prefer authentic and creative human actions. For instance, I’d hate to think of my frequent visits to the oldfashioned barber’s shop at Hotel New York being replaced with a home hairdresser robot. The overall experience of an authentic atmosphere, good conversations and old-fashioned craftsmanship are why I’ve been a loyal customer there for twenty years. A robot can’t beat that, efficient or not.

We are also seeing the technology developing rapidly in our field of Performance Management. The cloud is now widely accepted, all kinds of data are being bundled together, and repetitive processes are becoming more and more automated. Futurologist Martin Ford, author of the book “Rise of the Robots” and one of the people you will encounter later in this magazine, advises financial teams above all to make sure they understand these new developments. Embrace them and focus on developing skills such as creativity and interpersonal relationships. Otherwise you’ll soon become irrelevant and be replaced by robots, he claims. In this magazine you’ll find client cases in which the latest technology is discussed, our consultants’ visions of their fields of expertise and the developments that they are encountering in their day-to-day work. Reading this gets you up to speed and fully aware. All that is left for you to do is adding your specific high-touch to the new hightech. Enjoy! Martijn Meuling

CONTENTS

50 PLANNING WITHOUT ANY MONKEY BUSINESS HOW TO AVOID POLITICAL BEHAVIOR IN YOUR PLANNING PROCESS?

34 ROLLING UP THE SLEEVES AT STAHL PREPARING FOR GROWTH WITH SCALABLE CONSOLIDATION

08 THE TWO PERSPECTIVES OF INTEGRATED REPORTING WHERE TO START?

06 FOCUSING ON THE MEMBERS AT THE ANWB PLANNING AT THE LARGEST ASSOCIATION OF THE NETHERLANDS

IN THIS EDITION: 06

PLANNING FOR THE MEMBERS AT THE ANWB

THE TWO PERSPECTIVES OF INTEGRATED REPORTING

SOPHISTICATED PLANNING AT BOOKING.COM

TODAY’S TRENDS

XBRL – DIET OR DESSERT?

EVEN LITTLE KIDS GROW UP

AGILE WITH A TOUCH OF CONCRETE

THE CLOUD IS NOT OPTIONAL

THE MAGIC OF BIG DATA

THE PRICE OF FLEXIBILITY

TIME FOR TAXES

5 QUESTIONS FOR HANS KAMPS – CFO OF BOSKALIS

HIGH TECH AT HOME

GETTING TO GRIPS WITH SMART METERS AT ALLIANDER

FROM COLUMN TO PYRAMID

ROLLING UP THE SLEEVES AT STAHL

I SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE...

5 QUESTIONS FOR FUTUROLOGIST MARTIN FORD

A SINGLE SHARED WAY OF WORKING AT HEIJMANS

7 NEW BEACONS FOR INFORMATION MANAGEMENT

FLEXIBLE CONSOLIDATION AT MOURIK

PLANNING WITHOUT ANY MONKEY BUSINESS

GRAPHICAL PLANNING REPORTS AT Q-PARK

THE BEST PLACES FOR CRAFTSMANSHIP

THE TERBERG GROUP TODAY

DETAILED PLANNING AT THE JIFFY GROUP

KEEP MOVING DURING RUSH HOUR

SEAMLESS INTEGRATION AT INTERXION

OPTIMIZING PROJECT MANAGEMENT AT BOSKALIS NL

5 QUESTIONS FOR INFOTHEEK

TOOL SELECTION: THE 5 KEY PITFALLS TO STEER CLEAR OF

72 COLOPHON

40 A SINGLE SHARED WAY OF WORKING AT HEIJMANS FROM MICROSOFT TO NETWEAVER AND HANA

54 GRAPHICAL PLANNING REPORTS AT Q-PARK DETAILS AT A GLANCE

PLANNING FOR THE MEMBERS AT THE

ANWB The ANWB – the Dutch automobile association – wants to use modern tools for planning and controlling all its business processes. In order to harmonize and standardize its planning process, the organization is switching to IBM’s TM1. This saves time and money, and provides more insight as well. TEXT: DANIELLE GRUIJS

As an association, the ANWB is in a unique situation. “We have 4.4 million members, making us the biggest association in the Netherlands,” says Michel Reijm of the ANWB. Being non-profit also affects the internal business operations. “We aim to invest a proportion of our profits in social projects,” explains Don Jacobs of the ANWB, “which then benefits our members.”

“IT’S SAVING TIME AND MONEY, BOTH ON THE ADMINISTRATIVE SIDE AND FOR THE USERS.” MORE TRANSPARENT AND ROBUST This situation meant that in the past there was a lot of room for exceptions in the internal processes. “Our actions are designed to serve the interests of the members and safeguard the future of the association,” Michel tells us. “That sometimes means opting for customization and flexibility.”

are lots of people who use the Wegenwacht app to report breakdowns. It means that the Wegenwacht knows exactly where these people are. That’s helpful for us, as well as being beneficial to the member whose car has broken down: we’re able to help quicker.”

MORE WITH LESS Michel and Don are enthusiastic about the results from the new planning solution. “It’s saving time and money, both on the administrative side and for the users,” says Michel. “We have more options for gaining insights and better overviews. We can now put a finger on the exact cause quicker.” Don agrees, adding, “The system has genuinely become faster.” The data has been made more accessible for the end users as well. “We’re able to do more,” says Michel, “but it hasn’t become any more difficult. Where you might expect the complexity to increase, it’s actually gotten simpler.”

Exceptions like these arose in the planning process too. “We have lots of different business lines, each with their own wish lists,” says Don. “In the past, efforts were made to comply with all these different wishes. Now we want to harmonize and standardize more. We want to use the control function to simplify internal processes and transactions where possible, to make the planning process more transparent and more robust.”

UTILIZING NEW POSSIBILITIES “TM1 is innovative,” states Michel about the choice of IBM TM1. “The engine is better, making the tool quicker and more user-friendly. We’ll be able to build on this platform in the future too, for instance to calculate the effects of various possible scenarios.” The ANWB also carefully considers how to use new capabilities in its core processes. The association recently has, for instance, introduced a new insurance policy called “Veilig Rijden” (or ”Safe Driving”). “This insurance policy rewards people who drive safely with reduced premiums,” explains Michel. “We install a connector in the car that is linked to its systems, letting us determine how safely you drive.”

Don Jacobs and Michel Reijm from the ANWB

CURIOUS? BAS IS HAPPY TO SHARE HIS EXPERIENCES VIA BAS.JANSEN@FINEXT.NL

READ MORE ABOUT PLANNING AT

However, all these possibilities lead to dilemmas as well. “The deeper the level of detail, the higher the level of accuracy,” Chiara states. “As a company, we are still finding the right balance between granularity, speed and efficiency. It is a constant trade-off between time and accuracy.”

BOOKING.COM? <

The Leading Platform for Self-Service Data Analytics

Deliver deeper insights in hours, not weeks with a repeatable workďŹ&#x201A;ow for analytics.

Download a FREE 14 Day Trial on www.alteryx.com and discover why analysts are hooked on the thrill of solving using Alteryx.

TODAYâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S

TRENDS

What is happening in Performance Management? And what does that mean for you? Seven experts give their personal opinion about the trends in their fields.

XBRL – DIET OR DESSERT? XBRL is gradually getting closer. Is this obligation only an additional burden, or does it offer opportunities as well? Jan Nico de Hoop thinks the latter. “XBRL is actually all about standardization; it’s the standard format for supplying information to the Chamber of Commerce, for example, or the Tax and Customs Administration, Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) and the banks. At the moment, only small companies are required to use XBRL. Over the coming years, that obligation will be extended to larger companies, and they’ll have to provide more information too. The intention is to have companies throughout Europe all report their data in the same way by 2020. I believe that this standardization certainly offers opportunities too. If you have to provide the same information in the same way, it’s only a small step to expand this to other reporting areas and the underlying source systems and processes. In the coming years, for example, a detailed standard format for the statement of financial position, income statement, and cash flow statement will be mandatory. The underlying ledger structure can also be used for the rest of the business. A lot of what is currently still set up in a company-specific way can then be configured to a standard. Take the Reference Chart of Accounts, for instance, a standardized set of ledgers based on the Dutch GAAP that is designed to fit in with the mandatory reporting. As soon as companies are using a standardized administrative system, each individual company will have to invest less time and money in setting up the system. After producing the data it’s finally time for the dessert: analyzing the data.”

TRIGGERED? PLEASE CONTACT JAN NICO VIA JAN.NICO.DE.HOOP@FINEXT.NL

EVEN LITTLE KIDS GROW UP Self-Service Business Intelligence (SSBI) is storming towards maturity. Even Gartner is completely revamping its current method of evaluating BI solutions. Jonathan Aardema explains its success. “Our everyday lives are getting more and more permeated by IT, and we now expect the same speed and freedom in our professional environments. SSBI providers such as Tableau, Qlik, Alteryx, and Power BI are responding to that with neat solutions; as an end user, you can now obtain your own individual relevant information. In practice, I see users making dashboards quickly and simply and carrying out ad hoc analyses. They are improving the control and decision-making, all by themselves. The first SSBI solution was born at the end of the twentieth century, as a counterpoint to the classical, user-unfriendly BI solutions of the time. It’s not yet twenty years later and SSBI has already been called “full-grown”. The Gartner research agency has for example shifted its research method over the last year; self-service is now the yardstick that all BI solutions will be measured against, including the classical ones. Which is logical, given that it’s nice to be able to make your own analyses without depending on someone else. You can go a pretty long way with only limited technical knowledge. Is SSBI now mature, then? I don’t think so. If the lifecycle of the product is to be completed, the SSBI solutions will need to innovate even more. For instance, in user-friendly availability of source data and in lowering the thresholds for analytics to be applied. This is the only way to stay relevant and not become old before its time.”

TRIGGERED? PLEASE CONTACT JONATHAN VIA JONATHAN.AARDEMA@FINEXT.NL

AGILE WITH A TOUCH OF CONCRETE Agile as a concept is here to stay. Rightfully so, thinks Roy Piek. Even so, he notes that it does not work equally well during every phase of an implementation project. “An agile implementation of a planning solution will work fine – even great. A consolidation solution, though, needs stricter project control in the early stages. Take the chart of accounts: it’s a lot more than just a list of account numbers. When designing a new consolidation solution, the chart of accounts also shows the relationships: is it an intercompany account, does it belong to a particular division? There are a lot of interdependencies. I think that you have to start with an overall chart of accounts, cast in concrete. You can extend this in sprints later on. The implementation of a planning solution doesn’t need as much concrete, as the characteristics of consolidation are different from those of planning. Consolidation processes have to make allowances for external requirements, which are by definition going to be less variable, whereas planning processes have to move more with the strategy, market conditions, and the operational results. The planning model elaborates on the chart of accounts: you decide how the business is going to be controlled and what insights management needs to be able to look ahead. Those are all aspects where the agile working method fits nicely and proves its worth daily. The rise of dynamic platform software is only going to make it even more important to get the basics fixed properly. That touch of concrete at the start lays the foundation for an agile handling of the rest of the project.”

TRIGGERED? PLEASE CONTACT ROY VIA ROY.PIEK@SONUM-INT.COM

THE CLOUD IS NOT OPTIONAL On-premise or in the cloud. Often this is a key consideration in the selection of tools. Wietse Mol does not think it will be an issue much longer. Is it still a choice? “I think that the cloud is becoming more and more the standard option. People often think that they can choose between purchasing hardware and leasing it in the cloud. Soon – in fact, it’s often the case already – you’ll be leasing the software and getting the hardware with it automatically. This change is driven by the economic model behind it. Cloud solutions are simply more interesting for software suppliers. If everyone is working on the same hardware, the systems administration becomes simpler. Automatic upgrades make the product lifecycle shorter, which in turn makes support cheaper. The structure of cloud licenses gives suppliers a better cash flow spread, longer-lasting relationships and higher barriers against switching behavior. The cloud model has so many benefits for the supplier that you’re going to be paying a lot more if you choose to use your own hardware. Compare it to the seats in your car. You can have special seats made, and people will still do this if they have a special reason for it, such as a back problem. But otherwise it’s much cheaper and simpler to buy your car with the seats included. Is this a bad thing? I don’t think so. It yields a lot of opportunities, such as cost benefits and being able to focus on your core tasks. But it does place demands on the IT organization: the role of IT is shifting towards coordination, getting the various cloud products to speak to each other. Soon, you won’t have any choice in that either.”

TRIGGERED? PLEASE CONTACT WIETSE VIA WIETSE.MOL@SWAPSUPPORT.NL

THE MAGIC OF BIG DATA Big data is now a permanent item on the IT agenda. Hans Geertsma investigates whether this is justified. Is big data really so magical? “It sounds so simple: use big data to generate insights. There’s a bit more to it in practice, though. If we look at the five V’s that big data stands for – volume, velocity, veracity, variety, and value – then the last one in particular demands a lot of attention. If there’s to be value, it means finance, IT, HR and marketing are all working together. It’s the only way you can determine where to look for the value, what the results obtained actually mean and – by no means unimportant – how you can cash in on it. You also have to set up the data properly for the way it is going to be used. For example, social media data has all five V’s. If you use this data to enrich traditional sales information, then it’s no problem if you miss a few minutes’ worth of data. For financial reporting, though, you need to have all the data so your information is complete. In addition, I think that you have to merge the new big data information flows with the data that you’ve already been using for years. This means that the data warehouse will have to be kept, alongside the data lake. The quality of the data and the data model are just as important for your overall insights, and perhaps more important than ever before. Magical insights from big data? Only if you know what you’re putting in, and what you’re looking at.”

TRIGGERED? PLEASE CONTACT HANS VIA HANS.GEERTSMA@PLAINWATER.NL

THE PRICE OF FLEXIBILITY The latest software developments, such as real-time and cloud-based, allow you to set up increasingly flexible budget models. Arjette Eenhuizen notes that this leads to new considerations. Flexibility has its price. “Literally: budget models used to be limited by a maximum number of cells or by the maximum loading time for a report. Those limitations no longer exist. More details, or lots of different versions? It’s all possible. Different limits arise instead; the costs are now the biggest restriction. In a lot of cloud models, you pay according to the size of the model. This creates new considerations. You have to choose between paying more and accepting that you won’t have ten different versions of the budget. Do you want to keep multiple versions with all the details, so that there’s an instant picture of how you got to that budget? Or will you accept a degree of uncertainty because you don’t have an overview of the changes. Flexibility has a price in a figurative sense too. Everyone is looking at the same truth, but this truth is changing quickly. If the business processes are not properly aligned, that becomes clear immediately. I’ve noticed that this takes a bit of getting used to for a lot of organizations. Real-time has its advantages as well, though. You input a number and you see the result at once. Thanks to this speed and in-depth integration, you can set up the budgeting process differently, making it more of a cooperative effort between departments. And that’s no small feat. I think that budgeting is shifting from being a requirement imposed by HQ to being a service for the business.”

TRIGGERED? PLEASE CONTACT ARJETTE VIA ARJETTE.EENHUIZEN@SONUM-INT.COM

TIME FOR TAXES Tax rules are clearly moving towards broad and transparent fiscal reporting. According to Benno van Ingen this demands more attention for the company’s tax position. “Unlike the financial position of the group, documentation and evidence relating to tax reporting, such as internal transfer prices, intangible fixed assets, and group financing are still often unavailable in a structured form. However, I expect that these are precisely the areas where even more transparency is going to be demanded. Tax, finance, risk and treasury must therefore work together more closely, retrieving and sharing much more data, and different kinds of information too. Both internally and from outside the boundaries of the organization. We ourselves do this as well, by working on smart solutions with our tax partners The Resource and Tytho. Take transfer pricing, for instance. This demands a lot of documentation, in which the agreements relating to transfer prices within the group are precisely recorded. In addition, the agreements and the actual transactions have to be available for every affiliated company. Existing information systems are often not set up for this. What this requires is an integrated environment that is capable of combining the functionalities of a document management system, a reporting system and a business process management system. It is more than likely that not everybody will be applauding these developments, but from the perspective of Performance Management, it is highly interesting: new information requirements demand new ideas.”

TRIGGERED? PLEASE CONTACT BENNO VIA BENNO.VAN.INGEN@FINEXT.NL

HOW MANY TAX ISSUES ARE YOU JUGGLING? Tax is becoming increasingly complex. More reporting requirements, the call for more transparency – as a financial specialist you’re dealing with a fair share of fiscal issues. At The Resource, we understand this. We’ve been connecting finance, IT and tax for 20 years. With tax reporting, process optimization and technological solutions.

Interested?

Please contact Patrick van Gerven via patrick.van.gerven@theresource.nl or +31 6 - 48 780 985. www.theresource.nl

5 QUESTIONS FOR

HANS KAMPS CFO OF BOSKALIS Boskalis is on the move. After a number of major takeovers, the company has diversified and moved away from a single, homogenous business model (dredging) to a variety of models, each of which has its own dynamics. How can you bring these worlds together? And what does it mean for information management? Let’s have a talk with CFO Hans Kamps. TEXT: DANIELLE GRUIJS

BOSKALIS HAS DONE A NUMBER OF MAJOR TAKEOVERS, SUCH AS SMIT IN 2010 AND DOCKWISE IN 2013. HOW DID THESE ACQUISITIONS IMPACT THE FINANCE DEPARTMENT? We are a complex company; carrying out projects all over the world, in all kinds of conditions, while external reporting also has to satisfy local requirements. The takeovers have only made the company more complex. We’re originally a contract-based business. The Smit takeover added all kinds of other business models, such as tug services, diving activities, and equipment hire. In addition, we traditionally worked in euros, whereas Dockwise did business in dollars. The acquisitions also meant substantial organizational changes, including the ERP systems that were already in use. It was quite an effort getting all that aligned with the administrative systems, with enough detail to allow the business to be controlled and to comply with external reporting requirements ranging from tax returns to filing the annual financial statements.

YOU MOVED TO AN INTEGRATED PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT SOLUTION IN TWO STAGES. WHY DID YOU WANT TO BRING THE VARIOUS WORLDS TOGETHER IN ONE SINGLE PLATFORM? Our consolidation system has a function that goes further than in many other organizations. As a company we are quite centralized, but there’s a hands-on approach from the top as well. What’s more, we operate in a lot of different countries with lots of currencies. We love the details too, in the sense that we want to see the results of individual projects and individual pieces of equipment in the reports. We want to be able to review them in a standardized way, so it would be awkward if every department had its own way of reporting. After the takeovers, it was taking longer and longer to get the right figures reported. We wanted to move to a single integrated system, with a single database that supports all the business units, all the business models, and analyses of currency effects.

THERE ARE ABOUT 800 REPORTING ENTITIES, SO THE CONSOLIDATION IS A BIG JOB. WHEN SETTING UP THE NEW SYSTEMS, YOU CHOSE AN ADVANCED MODEL, CERTAINLY GIVEN THE SCALE. It’s because we want to get so much management information out of the system that we are asking so much of the consolidation solution. We are a cross between a shipping company and a contractor. On the one hand, we want to have detailed insight while projects are being carried out. On the other, we have a lot of capital-intensive equipment that we use for the projects and for transport activities. This requires an efficient and clear picture of the revenues and the cost structures for the ships. In addition, we are a quoted company and that means that we need a lot of explanation of the balance sheet items for IFRS. Therefore, the advanced model was a deliberate choice. From a technical point of view, we could also work with separate applications for each division. You would then gain in performance and flexibility, but you’d lose the overall insight of what equipment is being used for which project. There’s a lot of cooperation between the divisions. This complexity was also one of the reasons why we wanted to do the project with Finext and Swap Support. They had a proven track record with a lot of good players. Finext has implemented a good application that Swap Support has further built upon. The team wins the race – a single specialist is not enough.

WHAT BENEFITS HAS THIS PRODUCED FOR YOU IN YOUR ROLE AS THE CFO? A major benefit is that the right figures get produced quicker: we are 1.5 to 2 weeks faster, and the reporting is more complete. If it takes too long before the right figures are available, there isn’t enough time for analysis and critical questions. The figures are now assessed before they reach me, which means they are more stable and I can run through them more quickly. For example, writing the internal report for the supervisory board also takes me less time. We now have high-quality figures at an earlier stage. But what I find even more important is that it’s a single system that generates the reports efficiently for the division and all the business units, at the level of detail they want. We have a variety of business units and we want everyone to be able to look at a number of important core figures in the same way. And that is what we achieved.

HOW DO YOU SEE THE FUTURE OF FINANCE WITHIN BOSKALIS? Finance has a number of distinct roles here, and that will not be changing in the future. Firstly, a monitoring role – providing the proof and controlling the risks that the financial department understands. The financial people can’t know everything, and we mustn’t claim that we do. On top of that, we have an advisory role. In a controlled way, we can provide insights to support the business operations. Finally, we also have an outward-facing role, providing external reports and making sure we fulfill the compliance requirements in time. Developments such as robotization are not playing such a big role for us as in industries such as retail, because we are more of a capital-intensive organization than a labor-intensive one. The SAP BPC project was not aiming to reduce the headcount, but we did want to shift towards more analysis. This keeps things stable, with firm foundations for the decisions that have to be taken. As an organization, there’s a lot we want to achieve, which requires the right figures at the right level.

CURIOUS? WESLEY IS HAPPY TO SHARE HIS EXPERIENCES VIA WESLEY.SCHULTE@FINEXT.NL

READ MORE ABOUT REPORTING IN THE BOSKALIS GROUP? <

HIGH TECH AT HOME

ASUS ZENBO HOME ROBOT

€ 527

If you’re looking for a friendly manager at home, Zenbo will help you with your everyday tasks. He follows you, answers questions, reads your reminders or your schedule, makes video calls, and lots of other things. If your housekeeping isn’t in order, the robot can control all your smart home appliances based on your instructions. So you can concentrate on the things you enjoy. >

AUGUST SMART LOCK Left your keys on the kitchen table and locked yourself out? As long as you’ve got your phone, everything will be okay. This electronic locking system lets you open and close the door remotely, using a mobile app. Also useful if you’re already on your way and can’t remember whether you locked the door or not. Having extra keys made is a thing of the past: you decide who’s allowed in. >

WWW.AUGUST.COM

WWW.ZENBO.ASUS.COM

€ 169

3D-PRINTER DA VINCI MINI W A nice simple printer to start 3D printing at home. You can download lots of 3D designs from the website so you can get started straight away. Really great for kids too! >

EU.XYZPRINTING.COM

€ 295

IKEA PLACE APP Don’t just measure: see! The IKEA Place app for your iPhone lets you put IKEA furniture in your home using AR. You can immediately see if it will fit and whether it looks good. And once you’ve chosen something, you can order it directly and save having to queue up at the checkout. WWW.IKEA.COM/NL/NL/ABOUT_IKEA/ NEWSITEM/IKEA_PLACE_APP >

PANASONIC ROBO-FRIDGE Yes, it’s real: the walking fridge! Not for sale yet, but there’s a working prototype. You can have the fridge respond to your voice or you can use a remote control. You don’t even have to get up off the sofa for another cold one. Just wait a bit longer and you’ll genuinely see the fridge wandering around the living room.

GETTING TO

GRIPS WITH SMART METERS AT ALLIANDER The grid operator Alliander takes its role in the energy transition to sustainability very seriously. The roll-out of smart meters to three million customers is a major part of this. To realize this huge operation, the network manager wants to manage the operational, tactical, and strategic plans better. SAP BW and BPC offer a joint platform for this. TEXT: DANIELLE GRUIJS

Smart meters play a crucial role in the energy transition. On top of that, there are statutory targets too. “All of our customers must have been offered a smart meter by 2020 and at least 80% must actually be installed,” says Marc van den Bos from Alliander. This huge operation comes with a large, diverse requirement for information. “We’re no longer able to just look at the number of meters that have been installed and say we’ve achieved our objective,” says Marc. “There are more aspects to it now. At the same time, the internal funding flows are changing, which demands good insight into the costs of the entire process.”

MORE INSIGHTS INTO OTHER AREAS Both users and management are positive about the results of the new planning processes. “It offers more insights into other areas,” says Marc. “For example, I can open multiple versions in a chart more easily, or take my own subsets for each month, workflow, or contractor.” “We can now experiment with additional what-if scenarios,” concludes Rob, “for example when drafting the strategic plan for different scenarios for wind energy. That previously took a week, but now we can change an item during a meeting and see the effects immediately. That means you are really in control of your planning.”

“THE OUTPUT OF ONE PLAN HAS GOT TO BE THE INPUT FOR THE NEXT ONE.” LINKING BI APPLICATIONS AND SOURCES Alliander has various planning departments that focus on the operational plans of today, the tactical plans for the coming two years, and the strategic plans for the coming five years. “All these plans must be connected to each other; the output of one plan has got to be the input for the next one,” explains Rob Wissink, Program Manager at Alliander. Transferring all the different plans into a single shared SAP BPC is quite a change for the systems. The data is collected and linked together from various sources, particularly from operational SAP applications that Alliander already uses. SAP BW (Business Warehouse) is used for structuring data and making it available in BPC. Finally, the reports are made accessible through SAP Business Objects.

Rob Wissink and René Segers from Alliander

CURIOUS? NAIDA IS HAPPY TO SHARE HER EXPERIENCES VIA NAIDA.SADZAK@PLAINWATER.NL

FROM DATA TO INSIGHTS The plans involve large amounts of data that has to come from different source systems. For example, one version of the integral meter activity plan consists of three million records, and a new version is made every month. Templates for SAP BPC, developed by Plainwater, are used to keep performance up. These templates have been especially developed to make it easy to add new functionalities. They can be used, for instance, to perform complex calculations faster, even with large amounts of data.

READ MORE ABOUT OPERATIONAL PLANNING AT ALLIANDER? <

FROM COLUMN TO

PYRAMID Consolidation is mostly about adding up and eliminating. What makes it so time-consuming? Alwin Berkhout and Stijn GabriĂŤls have been in the consolidation business for years. Both have their own opinion on what the best consolidation software is, and theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ll probably never agree on that. But what do they think about consolidation itself? A dialogue. TEXT: DANIELLE GRUIJS

ALWIN: Consolidation hasn’t really changed in 20 years. The tooling has come a very long way and consolidation solutions now come in lots of different flavors. Eventhough, in terms of the content, there haven’t been many changes since I was doing the consolidation on paper in 14 columns.

STIJN: Agreed. I know what you mean. In the last 10 years or so, the cash flow has become more important as management information. The rest is all about adding up and eliminating. Even so, in practice it’s often a complex process. What do you think?

ALWIN: Absolutely. Consolidation is about the details. Everything has got to be right. If the input is of poor quality, creating a good consolidation becomes a tricky puzzle. And last-minute changes in the figures or the entity structures certainly don’t help. I also noticed that some organizations ask for unnecessary extras. The complexity is in the wrong things.

ALWIN: “THE INFORMATION SHOULD BE LESS DETAILED AS IT GOES UP THE ORGANIZATIONAL HIERARCHY.” STIJN: It’s too extensive sometimes. There are more journal items than needed, or quarterly forecasts with loads of details that have no added value. I recently saw a management information package with 150 KPIs – there’s no way you can target all of those. On top of that, some of the KPIs need 24 pages of calculations. Sure, you can calculate it – but nobody really knows what it means.

ALWIN: The information pyramid that we’re all aiming for is too often still simply a column. The information should actually be getting less detailed as it goes up the organizational hierarchy. Many CFOs are still too focused on the details, causing an oversupply of information. This can be dozens and dozens of pages sometimes. In the past, I have occasionally left out some details per reporting round to shorten the report by a couple of pages each time. Nobody ever noticed this.

STIJN: And too much detail creates a downward spiral: every item leads to more questions, and you end up supplying more and more details. A new guy – or woman – in charge of finance often has an impact on the consolidation and the management information: a change in the way the business is controlled demands different information. The type of organization plays a part too. A family company, where things are controlled more by instinct and where there is less time pressure, needs less detail than a private equity investor. Acquisitions, takeovers, and stock market flotations all make consolidation more complex and increase the need for management information.

ALWIN: Internal factors definitely affect the complexity, but there are external factors too, such as changes to GAAP, tax legislation, or XBRL.

STIJN: So what can you do to make it simpler? Personally, I think that getting the users involved could make a big difference. For instance, by giving back to the business as well as taking from it. The holding company often asks for detailed figures for the consolidation, but the information people need locally is different. They are more interested in management information.

ALWIN: If you can give something back, you get the local offices much more involved in the process. I know one organization where, in addition to the consolidated monthly reports, the same reports are also made available at the local level but with more detail plus textual explanations. That does mean more data, but in return you get more motivated branch offices.

STIJN: We were talking about the substantive aspects of consolidation, but we mustn’t forget Disclosure Management if we’re talking about getting the people involved. Disclosure Management is a technical development, but it does have a lot of influence on the cooperation between the various departments. The process becomes more structured, and the outputs and the figures as well. And everyone spends less time on cut-and-paste actions and version control. To be honest, I would have expected this to be taken up earlier.

Alwin Berkhout

STIJN: “NOT ONLY TAKING FROM THE BUSINESS BUT GIVING BACK AS WELL.” ALWIN: Also, Disclosure Management lets you do the monthly reporting quicker. Monthly reporting makes the whole process less complex. You’re utilizing repetition as a strength: if you’re doing something every month, it’s easier than when you’re doing it once a quarter or even once a year. You can take a look every month to see if all the details are really needed. It would be great if we could progress from a reporting column to a genuine information pyramid everywhere.

YOUR OWN DIALOGUE WITH ALWIN OR STIJN? PLEASE CONTACT ONE OF THEM VIA ALWIN.BERKHOUT@FINEXT.NL OR STIJN.GABRIELS@FINEXT.NL

Stijn Gabriëls

ROLLING UP THE SLEEVES AT

STAHL The chemicals company Stahl has ambitious growth plans in which takeovers play a major role. To assist in this, Stahl needs scalable consolidation processes. SAP BPC and HANA are supporting the major steps that the organization is taking. TEXT: DANIELLE GRUIJS

“We want to be able to grow as a company,” says Bram Drexhage, CFO at Stahl. The chemicals company specializes in process chemicals – for tanning, coloring, and painting – for the leather industry and coatings for other materials such as textiles, rubber, metal, and wood. “Throughout the world there are about 5 major players in the leather industry; we want to be number one. To achieve that, we have taken over the two biggest players.”

CONTROL AND SCALABILITY The takeovers put big demands on the consolidation process. “We’ve nearly tripled in size in 4 years. That has changed our information requirements; control and scalability have become more important,” explains Piet Bekkers, CIO at Stahl. To facilitate this, the multinational is switching to SAP BPC. “In one of the takeovers we got an extra 18 entities. Our previous solution was not flexible enough for all these changes to be implemented quickly,” Irene Rutten, Financial Controller at Stahl, tells us.

gone from an average of 10 working days to an average of 8.” “Furthermore, the quality and reliability of the system has also improved since data can be compared” states Bram. “That’s even more important to me than the speed.” The data integration is an additional plus point. “The link between SAP Accounting and SAP BPC Reporting is a major step forward,” says Irene. “It’s much more consistent – everyone is using the same ledger and the same mapping. There’s less manual input and so it’s less susceptible to errors.”

ONGOING PROFESSIONALIZATION The organization is constantly preparing for the next stages of its growth. “We want to professionalize further,” explains Bram. “We need a clean house, also in the local countries.”

QUICKER WITH HANA After implementing the new consolidation solution, performance dropped. “This was primarily a technical issue; the combination of the old database with the new BPC software did not perform sufficiently in terms of memory,” explains Piet. Stahl decided to switch to HANA. Irene: “HANA has improved the performance drastically: the users can open input screens and save data quicker. Consolidating only takes half a minute, and we can refresh large amounts of data relatively quickly for the reporting.”

“THERE ARE NO LIMITATIONS ON THE SCALABILITY OF THE SYSTEM.”

Piet Bekkers, Irene Rutten and Bram Drexhage from Stahl

CURIOUS? GERT-JAN IS HAPPY TO SHARE HIS EXPERIENCES VIA GERT-JAN.VAN.DEN.BERG@FINEXT.NL

FASTER AND BETTER

LEARN MORE ABOUT CONSOLIDATION

The international chemicals organization is satisfied, not only with HANA but also with SAP BPC itself. Piet says, “This step will help us handle multiple acquisitions; there are no limitations on the scalability of the system. The end-of-period tasks also take less time now, for both the quarter and the annual ending.” Irene agrees: “We’ve

AT STAHL?

I SPY WITH MY

LITTLE EYE... A picture is worth a thousand words. Data visualization brings data and information across in a clear and effective way. Giving optimal insight. However, uncovering the right story can sometimes be quite a puzzle. And that’s not what we aim for. Paul Damen went on a search for the most awkward pictures. How shouldn’t it be done? And what is the right way? TEXT: PAUL DAMEN

Data visualization makes data accessible, usable, and understandable for the users. In the graph from Facebook shown here, though, there’s a lot that’s going wrong. A quick test: what is your conclusion if you look at the graph for 5 seconds – do you think more women than men are looking at your page, in percentage terms? And that the proportion of women aged 18 to 24 is much higher than the proportion of men in the same age category?

SO WHAT’S THE RIGHT WAY? The graph alone is not enough to give the right recommendations for improvement. That’s because we don’t know one of the absolutely key things about the data visualization: the context. Even a graph that passes all the data visualization experts’ tests isn’t necessarily a good one. Visualization goes further than simply using the right colors and sticking to a couple of rules. A graph can therefore not be deemed good or bad without a context. The first thing to learn more about is the purpose of the graph. Who is going to use it? What information do they want to see? And what information do they need to know? The answer to the question of how it should be displayed can only be given once you know all that.

I SPY WITH MY LITTLE EYE... Creating data visualizations is more than just making pretty graphs. Good data visualization gets your insights across, encourages people to think, and gets the users to take action. But only if they can see the same things as you.

LIKE TO SEE MORE? PAUL WILL BE PLEASED TO HELP VIA PAUL.DAMEN@FINEXT.NL

Color The bar showing the female population is green. People unconsciously associate green with good. Which is fine if thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s the message, but otherwise youâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re better off using neutral colors. Several shades of the same color work well too, for example light and dark blue. That looks nice and calm and helps put the emphasis where you want it.

Consistency The numbers on the bars are inconsistent. Any visualization must be as consistent as possible, creating a calm overview and making sure that your eye is only drawn towards the key items. The numbers in the first bar have two decimal places, the second bar has three and then the third bar has only one. Subconsciously, these types of inconsistencies distract the human brain, whereas the numbers that are shown are really only peripheral to the visualization.

T ype of graph The graph has to suit the message: a bar chart is useful above all if you want to see numbers over the course of time. If you want to see a trend between men and women, use a line chart. If you want to show the breakdown by gender for the various age groups, a block chart would work better.

Too much information The diagram contains too much information. There are two dimensions (male/female plus the age groups) and two measured values (absolute numbers and percentages). All too soon, this will leave you drawing incorrect conclusions. The absolute numbers of women are higher, but the percentage distributions show something different. Where there seems to be a major difference in the 18 to 24 age group, it turns out not to be much smaller in terms of the percentages. That is because the bars show absolute numbers. You can, for instance, see that the percentage of men is higher in the 25 to 34 age group, although that is not the conclusion you might draw at a first glance. The abundance of information only serves to confuse.

5 QUESTIONS FOR

MARTIN FORD How much is automation impacting our work? We are talking to futurologist Martin Ford, author of “Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future”. He has done extensive research into the consequences of robotization. Will our jobs still exist in 2030? TEXT: DANIELLE GRUIJS

WE HAVE SEEN TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENT BEFORE, FOR INSTANCE IN THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION AND WITH THE RISE OF AUTOMATION IN THE 1950S. WHY IS IT DIFFERENT NOW? Globally, we are seeing a clear trend towards fewer working hours being needed for the same output. This is due to three different developments. Firstly, Moore’s Law – which states that hardware speed doubles every year – now also applies to software. The second trend is machine learning: machines are starting to think. Not like a person thinks, but they can recognize patterns. That is totally different from just giving computers a lot of number-crunching power. The third important aspect is that this is about technology that will be widely used. It’s not limited to a specific sector or a certain part of the business process, but will be used by all organizations in all areas. See it more like the rise of electricity: nowadays no organization would consider working without it.

WILL THE FINANCIAL DEPARTMENT STILL EXIST IN 2030? Sure, but in a totally different form. Finance will remain important, no matter who does the work. There will be fewer people as a lot of the work will be automated. We expect that automation will have the greatest impact on repetitive and predictable tasks. This isn’t just about administrative tasks, but also about tasks like reporting or setting up the same analyses each month. As soon as someone else could do the work in the same way, chances are the work will be taken over by robots. To remain relevant in a financial role, you have to come up with new ideas. Focus on developing skills such as creativity and nurturing interpersonal relationships.

IN YOUR BOOK YOU DESCRIBE THE “PERFECT STORM”, A CRISIS THAT ARISES WHEN MULTIPLE DEVELOPMENTS TAKE PLACE AT THE SAME TIME. HOW CAN ORGANIZATIONS PREPARE FOR THIS? Lots of things are happening at once. In addition to technological developments we also have to deal with the consequences of climate change and a migration crisis. This is having an impact on politics; it’s difficult to get climate change on the political agenda if people are worried about their jobs. We have to find a holistic approach to dealing with the perfect storm. Some organizations are appointing special executives to think about this. I think that is a good idea; it’s not just about the specific changes in the finance department, for example, but about the entire organization.

DO YOU THINK ROBOTS SHOULD PAY TAXES? We should certainly do something with taxes, but it doesn’t mean that it has to come from robots. To start with, it is hard to define what a robot exactly is. In addition, we do not want to stop technological developments, but rather anticipate on them. The concept of a basic income can help here: the idea that everyone gets a fixed income, whether or not you are working. We can then benefit from the Peltzman Effect, which states that people will take more risks if it is safer to do so. Look at playgrounds for example; they have been made safer, but the number of injuries to children is not dropping. That’s because children dare to take more risks in a safe playground. The basic income works like a safety net, making people more inclined to start their own company or change jobs.

WHAT ADVICE DO YOU HAVE FOR MANAGERS AND CONTROLLERS? Embrace new technology. There is no point in denying it will happen: robots are going to become just as normal as electricity. Immerse yourself in the possibilities and discover, for example, what “deep learning” means. This will allow you to stay ahead and to take the lead in this new world. Think of what these developments mean for you, your job, and your organization. Think about what it means to shrink your team. At the same time, make sure that as many people as possible can make the transition from predictable, repetitive tasks to creativity and interpersonal skills.

A SINGLE SHARED WAY OF WORKING AT

HEIJMANS Heijmans has almost finished making the company-wide ERP landscape more uniform. The SAP BPC upgrade is helping, with a switch from Microsoft to Netweaver and integration with SAP ECC. The construction company can report in more detail on a monthly basis, straight from the general ledger to the consolidation. TEXT: DANIELLE GRUIJS

The SAP BPC upgrade and the migration from a Microsoft platform to Netweaver fit into a broader SAP program at Heijmans. “Our SAP program is aimed at improving control and increasing efficiency,” says Kees Leenders, the SAP Program Manager at Heijmans. “We’re a highly diverse organization,” says Robin Whelan, accounting & reporting specialist at Heijmans. “There are large-scale and small-scale projects as well as recurring business. All these processes have to be included in the new standardized models.”

“WE ARE REPORTING FASTER, WITH MORE TRANSPARENCY AND LESS RISK OF MAKING MISTAKES.”

INTERNET OF THINGS Heijmans is not only using the latest technological developments for its internal processes. The organization also uses the Internet of Things for its business, monitoring measured values for maintenance contracts through sensors. These measurements are collected through the cloud, after which replacements, maintenance, or cleaning are scheduled automatically. The construction concern is also starting to input a lot more data at the source. A mechanic enters the job activities digitally, which immediately triggers the creation of an invoice and includes the job in the source system. Previously three people worked on a paperwork order: it had to be filled out, entered, and invoiced.

FASTER AND MORE TRANSPARENT Kees and Robin are positive about the new consolidation solution. “Now we can consolidate 200 entities within the application, while previously, for performance reasons, we needed an intermediate step of 30 to 40 pre-consolidations in Excel,” Kees says. “We are reporting faster, with more transparency and less risk of making mistakes.”

UPGRADE DURING THE SAP ECC TRANSITION The SAP BPC upgrade is being done in the middle of the SAP ECC transition, with the link to SAP ECC being an important objective of the upgrade. “Some business units had already switched to ECC, others hadn’t. Also, a few operational flows still had to be transferred to the new uniform chart of accounts,” says Kees. To properly support the operational flows plus the 200 legal entities during the SAP ECC transition, different variants of the model were built. “We developed three different models,” explains Robin. “One for manual input, one with an interface that mapped onto the chart of accounts from the local source system, and one with a direct interface via ECC.”

FROM MICROSOFT TO NETWEAVER AND HANA In addition to the switch from Microsoft to Netweaver, Heijmans is taking another step: to HANA Enterprise Cloud (HEC), the latest technology platform. “That fits the Heijmans ‘cloud unless’ strategy,” explains Kees. The move to HANA provides a big performance benefit. “Not so much when making reports; that is about as fast as it did before changing to HANA,” says Robin. “However, you can make a lot more cross-sections and drill down deeper into the information.”

Robin Whelan and Kees Leenders from Heijmans

CURIOUS? WIETSE IS HAPPY TO SHARE HIS EXPERIENCES VIA WIETSE.MOL@SWAPSUPPORT.NL

READ MORE ABOUT THE NEW SAP-LANDSCAPE AT HEIJMANS? <

A good parasite never kills its host Understandably we distrust parasites, after all they benefit from their hosts – not exactly the ideal dinner guest! However, while that may be the case, they also provide balance, an invaluable attribute that could be used to describe tax. Taxation lives on the fruit of our labour and capital, giving back through the value-based distribution and redistribution of income determined by the government. It’s the majority of state budgets, which makes it a key contributor to national and holistic state programs. Thus, just like parasites service our ecosystem, tax services our finances and while you cannot see tax, we all know it’s there. Our relationship with tax is a struggle at times, as parasites can leave the host open to opportunistic illness aka audits; nevertheless, what would our world be like without tax... yes, I don’t want to think about it either. But, as in the evolution of its biological counterpart, taxation should endeavor to develop a balanced relationship with its hosts, which is something that increasing regulations and procedures threatens to disturb. Mistletoe, the most romantic of good parasites, could inspire taxation. As while it lives off its host, the overall benefits are to the insects and trees as a whole – the price we pay as a community.

Tytho is a global team of IT, Supply Chain, and Tax experts who are committed to their client’s needs: streamlining and automating key Indirect Tax and Transfer Pricing processes. Our high perfor mance culture means we are able to stay ahead of the herd, enabling you to focus on improving your business. Tytho: your partner in Tax Automation.

Tytho B.V. Kruisplein 484 (Calypso) 3012 CC Rotterdam The Netherlands Phone: +31 (0)88 10 11 200 info@tytho.com www.tytho.com

7 NEW BEACONS FOR INFORMATION MANAGEMENT The arrival of in-memory databases such as HANA means that many of the traditional principles for business intelligence no longer apply. And that demands a new reference point. What do you need to know today if you want to make the right choices for the next five years? TEXT: DANIÃ&#x2039;L SANDERS & BASTIAAN SANDERS

1. BACK TO A SINGLE MAINFRAME

5. HIGH DEMANDS IMPOSED ON THE SOURCES

Integration will be key. We are currently still seeing a lot of multi-tier applications, with separate servers for databases, applications, and front ends. Techniques such as HANA make this split into layers unnecessary, because the application calculations are already executed in the database. The functional boundary between storage, logic, and presentation disappears, allowing development on a single platform.

Live calculations can now be done so fast that you need less interim storage to be able to do the calculations. The golden rule within BI was to have at least three “save” actions. That is no longer strictly necessary. And the growth of data means that a critical look will be taken at the data storage: the more there is, the more expensive storing will be. However, storing less means that you have to be able to rely on what you do store. The correctness of your sources becomes even more crucial.

2. DATA FROM OTHER SOURCES It seems as if software suppliers are becoming more tolerant towards solutions from other suppliers. The cloud plays a role here, as does the rise of options for reporting using different types of software solutions. Take Salesforce: this CRM package also contains reporting tools nowadays, causing the research agency Gartner to classify it as BI.

3. NEW DATABASE TECHNIQUES The BI field arose because organizations wanted to store data in a structured way in a data warehouse. Reasons included not only the performance, but also the complexity of integrating data from different source systems. A lot of progress has already been made in storage methods. Consider column-based databases, for instance, in which preparing the data beforehand no longer yields performance benefits and is no longer necessary. On top of that, in-memory offers a completely new direction, providing performance gains that make preliminary calculations redundant. Calculations can now be carried out real-time. The role of BI is thus shifting from structured storage to smart retrieval.

6. FIT IN WITH THE STANDARD The tipping point between customization and standard processes is starting to change. This has been the case for some time already with data recording processes, but applies now for the reporting process as well. An increasing number of tools is offering standard analyses, letting you choose between investing in adapting the reports to fit your processes or adapting the processes to fit the software. Fitting in nicely with the standard also helps the integration with other applications.

7. NO SEPARATION BETWEEN BI AND ERP The deeper the integration between the source systems and the reporting tools, the more the separation between BI and ERP gets blurred. That has consequences for ERP systems that have already been in use for some time and for which the choices were made years ago. Today, the ideal road map looks different. If you are looking at a migration to HANA or to the cloud, it is good to assess whether it is better to migrate or to re-implement.

NEW CHOICES 4. REAL-TIME REPORTING The big question is no longer whether real-time reporting is possible, but whether you need it. Does it offer added value to your organization? And what are you trying to achieve with the data? Real-time is often necessary for operational reporting. For instance, it lets you report faster on the latest production figures or the latest inventory levels in the warehouse. For monthly or annual reporting, the overall picture is what matters and real-time changes are perhaps less interesting. The added value of real-time results is highly dependent on your job function and on the nature of the data. If you are preparing a new budget, for example, it may often be undesirable for users to already get the budget in their reports before it has been approved. In cases like these, you want to load the data rather than making it available real-time.

These new beacons mean that you will have to sail a different course. The route taken will not only depend on which way the wind is blowing today, but has to take all possible weather conditions into account. In the longer term, you may perhaps want to automate the billing, or start reporting in real-time. If so, now is the time to make sure the systems are ready for that.

WANT TO SET YOUR OWN BEACONS? PLEASE CONTACT DANIËL AT DANIEL.SANDERS@PLAINWATER.NL

FLEXIBLE CONSOLIDATION AT

MOURIK Mourik is an international organization working on project basis, with 2000 employees worldwide. The family-run business was looking for a solution to standardize its consolidation processes. At the same time, the organization wants a flexible way of handling the processes in the 80 entities, such as closings at the end of the month and at the end of four-week periods. TEXT: DANIELLE GRUIJS

The implementation of Tagetik helps keeping the consolidation under control. “Our goal is to standardize the financial processes more, keeping them under control,” says Gerald Rietveld, Financial Controller at Mourik. Previously, the construction company used Excel for the consolidation processes of its 80 entities.

“IS REPORTING IMPORTANT ENOUGH TO CHANGE THE PAYMENT OF SALARIES?”

operate seven days a week and twenty-four hours a day. To control that, you’ve got to employ a lot of people. In the cloud you can share with others, making it much less expensive.”

FASTER AND MORE INSIGHT Mourik is positive about the results of the new consolidation solution. “We achieved standardization by using Tagetik, with more insights and faster period ends,” says Auke. “We can give more attention to the balance sheet each period, which saves us a lot of effort at the end of the year,” adds Gerald. “The next step is to tackle analyzing.”

MONTHLY AND EVERY FOUR WEEKS Despite the standardization, the family business wants to handle the internal processes within the entities flexibly. This sounds like a contradiction at first glance, but does fit well with what the business wants. “The majority of our entities work with four-week periods, but our international entities and a few of the Dutch entities work with month ends,” says Auke Droogh, a controller at Mourik. Not changing everything to a four-weekly cycle was therefore a deliberate decision. “Traditionally we work with four-weekly reporting periods, like many other construction companies,” says Auke. “That matches with the payments of wages. However, the international companies and a few of the companies we have acquired, report monthly, which corresponds to the payment of salaries in those companies. Salaries are the biggest cost item in our sector. You have to consider whether reporting is really important enough to change the payment of salaries to match.”

EASE OF USE IN THE CLOUD Mourik has chosen Tagetik to facilitate the consolidation processes. “In particular, we valued ease of use very highly. Our users are accustomed to Excel, and Tagetik stays close to that,” says Auke.

Gerald Rietveld and Auke Droogh from Mourik

CURIOUS? NIELS IS HAPPY TO SHARE HIS EXPERIENCES VIA NIELS.STERKENBURG@FINEXT.NL

READ MORE ABOUT CONSOLIDATION AT MOURIK?

During the selection, Mourik was mainly looking at cloud solutions. “As a business, our philosophy is to outsource as many systems as possible,” says Auke. “This has to do with support: the computing capacity of all systems keeps increasing, so you have to add extra servers to your own hardware every year. In addition, we’re moving towards a twenty-four-hour society, where organizations

Managing Finance is complex. Your software shouldnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t be!

Budgets, plans, forecasts, financial statements, regulatory and management reports, no problem. That is, unless these processes are managed separately, manually or require IT to produce the data, information or reports. Thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s where things get complicated and data accuracy becomes compromised. For more information: CCH Tagetik Benelux Mr. D.U. Stikkerstraat 10

Financial leaders trust CCH Tagetik to unify these processes and fully automate these functions within a single, corporate performance

6842 CW Arnhem

management solution. CCH Tagetik Cloud and our on-premise software deliver

The Netherlands

a collaborative approach to financial tasks, help translate high level strategy

marketing.benelux@tagetik.com

www.tagetik.com/nl

into actionable plans while using comprehensive controls to produce error-free financials and reports in line with the latest regulatory standards.

don’t want to miss a thing in the cloud? Would you like to take advantage of the cloud without losing your trusted Performance Management applications? You can. Using our Cloud Enabler enables you to easily transfer SAP BPC, Oracle Hyperion and OneStream XF to your own private cloud.

Wietse Mol “Our private-cloud provider Referit is proactive and quick to at Swap Support respond. This assists us in creating stable and fast Performance Management applications for organizations like Endemol and Boskalis.”

Would you like to know more? Please contact Frans Koster: 078-619 0434 or cloudenabler@referit.nl.

Higher quality at lower costsService Desk in The Netherlands Integration of private and public cloud

Fast results without complicated procedures

More time to focus on your core business

PLANNING WITHOUT ANY

MONKEY BUSINESS Many organizations streamline their planning processes and invest in applications to anticipate on market changes. And rightly so. However, the effectiveness of these processes and tools depends on the behavior of people. All too often, planning processes become political rather than social in nature. How do you prevent the planning process from turning into monkey business? TEXT: PATRICK TULLEMANS

The planning process sometimes leads to political and dysfunctional behavior that is more reminiscent of the conduct of monkeys at the zoo than of effective interplay. Just like in primate troupes, behavior is strongly determined by individuals’ positions within the group. The gorilla who plays the leader and beats his chest hard to impress the rest of the group looks like backcasting, a planning process in which the senior managers determine targets that the forecast then has to converge on. Monkeys attract attention or even flirt to maintain good relations with the leader of the group. This is similar to carpeting: employees want to keep the management happy, avoid awkward questions about prognoses and hold back any bad news. Other examples include sandbagging – toning down expected results to gain more recognition if expectations are exceeded – and we also often see gaming – influencing budget targets downwards to manipulate the bonus system. In situations where the planning process is not going smoothly, we also see second guessing: the organization starts to doubt the planning figures. This distrust can result in negative attitudes, for example from the logistics team about the sales department. Worst-case scenario, logistics react by making their own plan.

“BASED ON FACTS, WITH ROOM FOR SUBJECTIVE OPINIONS.”

The underlying idea when asking questions is to find answers that are grounded in evidence, through dialogue.

“OPEN QUESTIONS AVOID SOCIALLY DESIRABLE ANSWERS.” KEY PERFORMANCE QUESTIONS To achieve this dialogue, we developed the Key Performance Questions, abbreviated to KPQ. KPQs are open questions that help you avoid getting the socially desirable answers. Our brains are also equipped to give as thorough an answer as possible to open questions. When presented with open questions, we consider and rearrange, rank, and assess the context. To be honest, that is the primary effect of asking these questions, regardless of the answer that is given. The following five KPQs can instigate an effective dialogue and encourage people to take action: 1. Retrospective: how are we doing? > Have we achieved our plan so far? > How accurate has the forecast been so far? > What have we done to get on track? 2. How realistic is the budget or forecast? > How is the current forecast different from the

TWO-WAY TRAFFIC How can you improve these behavior patterns? It is basically about creating a clear picture for each other of the plans and forecasts by having an effective dialogue during the budget or forecast review. We call this a “performance dialogue”: the communication is two-way rather than one-way. You have to be unprejudiced and listen to each other. There is mutual respect and openness about the assumptions that the budget or forecast is based on. Risks, opportunities, ambitions, and the feasibility of the objectives are shared openly. All of this is based on objective facts as much as possible, but with room for subjective opinions. How can you set up this ideal dialogue? The crux is to ask questions – the right questions. Questions that give answers to fundamental issues about the current and future performance of the business unit.

previous one? > Are the underlying assumptions valid? > Is the forecast consistent with the previous plan year? 3. Is the budget or the forecast ‘enough’? > Are we going to realize our targets with the current

forecast? > What extra resources or investments are needed? 4. What if? > What are the positive opportunities and negative risks? > What contingency plans have we defined for this? > What feeling does the bandwidth in the forecast give?

5. How are we going to make adjustments if necessary? > How do we make sure the plans get implemented? > What measures can we take to get on track?

THE CORRECT ORDER We often see that a review immediately zooms in on the third question, making the dialogue falter. “Is the plan realistic” precedes “is the plan enough”, because you have to know whether the plan and associated figures are realistic before you can assess whether you can achieve your target with that plan. Conversely, you could forecast that you will achieve the target, which means nothing if the forecast is unrealistic.

“FIRST, YOU HAVE TO KNOW IF THE PLAN AND ASSOCIATED FIGURES ARE REALISTIC.” EFFECTIVE INTERPLAY Tools, data, and processes are strong enablers. Of course, you cannot manage the performance of the organization without the correct data and a structured planning process. However, a powerful and open performance dialogue is an indispensable complement to it. It yields common ground in the insights and outlook on future developments. This lets the organization make better decisions. As for monkey business, you’ll have to go to the zoo.

YOUR OWN DIALOGUE? PLEASE CONTACT PATRICK VIA PATRICK.TULLEMANS@FINEXT.NL

GRAPHICAL PLANNING REPORTS AT

Q-PARK Q-Park had been using a planning solution for years. When this tool became outdated, they went looking for a new solution for both the operational and the financial planning. The new planning solution BOARD integrates the planning process with graphical reports. The solution saves time and simplifies the internal communication. TEXT: DANIELLE GRUIJS

Q-Park Nederland chose BOARD. “We wanted a webbased tool that can also be used remotely,” explains Tim Reinards, Business Controller at Q-Park Nederland. “Additionally, we were looking for a solution that suited our business: not too big, but not too small either. We needed a flexible solution.” With the toolkit approach of BOARD, Q-Park is also able to perform maintenance tasks without the need of IT involvement.

“YOU CAN EASILY MAKE CROSS-SECTIONS, WHICH IMPROVES INSIGHT AND RELIABILITY.”

instance, adding extra cameras and opening barriers,” says Tim. “The parking host at the garage can focus on physical activities at the site: cleaning and technical maintenance.” The organization is also working on new payment methods. “Take online reservation. You can reserve a parking space beforehand. This could be for events in the Ziggo Dome, for example. You reserve and pay via the website, receive a QR code and drive in and out using your cell phone.” Tim sees that technical developments are also impacting financial jobs. “Administrative work is on the way out or has already disappeared. More and more activities are done automatically through workflows and smart software. Other financial activities such as making and assessing business cases, which need ad hoc reasoning and out-of-the-box thinking, will remain necessary though,” he claims.

ZOOM IN ON DETAILS IMMEDIATELY Tim is positive about the results of the new planning tool. “BOARD is very graphical. You can easily make cross-sections, for example a selection by region or type of parking lot or garage. This improves insight and reliability.” Another benefit of the graphical options for reporting is the communication with the Executive Board. “It’s easier to communicate with the Executive Board,” says Tim. “We put BOARD on the screen and together we can see what exactly is happening in the budget. It’s more flexible for making data cross-sections, so if there are any questions we can view the details immediately. We don’t have to come back with an analysis later on.”

“THE ADDED VALUE IS MORE IN THE HUMAN TOUCH THAN IN THE ADMINISTRATIVE PROCESS.” DEVELOPMENTS IN THE BUSINESS Q-Park is always integrating the latest technological developments, also for its parking lots and garages. “With the new technology, we can now manage many of the tasks of the parking host in the garage remotely. For

“Finance is increasingly becoming the connecting factor between departments, acting as a proactive sparring partner. Almost all departments end up talking to finance, whether it’s about acquisitions, new marketing initiatives, operational bottlenecks or other business cases. At the end of the day, they all want feedback from a financial expert. The added value is more in the human touch than in the administrative process.”

CURIOUS? EIJE IS HAPPY TO SHARE HIS EXPERIENCES VIA EIJE.WIERSEMA@SONUM-INT.COM

WOULD YOU LIKE TO READ MORE ABOUT PLANNING AT Q-PARK? <

THE BEST PLACES FOR CRAFTSMANSHIP NEW YORK BARBERSHOP

ROTTERDAM

The family company New York Barbershop has been exuding the ambience of a genuine barber’s shop ever since it was founded in 1884. The retro interior, the crackly jazz music and a good coffee or beer make the experience complete. Sitting in the old barber’s chair, being served by pure professionals, you can watch the commuters peering in through the windows. Sorry ladies, gents only! >

COFFEE BAR BLACK & BLOOM Wonderful coffee made from beans they roast themselves, served with typical Groningen hospitality and drawing on the wide-ranging expertise of the owner, Gerben Engelkes. Don’t rush your visit: take your time – drinking coffee at Black & Bloom is a genuine experience. >

WWW.BLACKANDBLOOM.NL

WWW.NEWYORKBARBERSHOP.NL

GRONINGEN

AMSTERDAM

ICE CREAM PARLOR AND CONFECTIONER’S VAN DER LINDE

RESTAURANT GREETJE

Skip the dessert with your dinner and have an ice cream from Van der Linde’s ice cream parlor and confectionery. There are often long queues in this small store, especially for their famous ice cream. But there’s no difficulty choosing: the only flavor they sell is vanilla.

The food here tastes even better than what your grandma used to cook. Great Dutch food with a modern twist and an archive full of wonderful recipes that have been passed on from one generation to the next, all in an old-fashioned and friendly ambience. >

THE HAGUE

WWW.RESTAURANTGREETJE.NL

FURNITURE MAKERS/ STORE/ WORKSHOP COUQOU Couqou is a genuinely unique store in the center of The Hague. A place where craftsmanship and design tastefully come together. They create fantastic furniture, designed and hand-crafted by the owner Niek Hijlkema himself, as well as clothing, accessories, and much more. Rather have custom furniture made? Couqou knows what to do. >

WWW.COUQOU.COM

THE

TERBERG GROUP TODAY Two years ago, Ivo Jansen of the Terberg Group shared his experiences with us about the selection of OneStream. A great deal has happened in the meantime at the international family company. How are things now? An update.

TEXT: DANIELLE GRUIJS

A merger between Terberg Environmental and the Spanish RosRoca Group has now made the Terberg Group one of the bigger players in Europe. “The takeover meant we doubled in size,” says Bart de Haas of the Terberg Group. Turnover increased by a factor of roughly two and the international organization has grown to 2500 employees. The number of entities has also doubled, from 25 to 50. The family company is a worldwide supplier of products such as specialized vehicles and lease cars.

MULTIPLE GAAPS ON A SINGLE PLATFORM This acquisition is impacting the finance department in several ways. “We saw a broader requirement for information and wanted to professionalize our reporting streams further,” adds Bart. “On top of that, we’re now reporting according to both Dutch and UK GAAP.” A unique solution is being created around the reporting for the two different GAAPs: both are generated within the same platform. “The entities load the data in one go, after which we report on it in two ways.”

LEADING THE WAY The Terberg Group likes taking the lead in its consolidation and reporting processes. For instance, the family company was only the second organization in the Benelux area to implement OneStream. “The flexibility of OneStream helps the integration,” says Ivo Jansen from the Terberg Group. “That flexibility was originally also one of the reasons for choosing this solution.” Other reasons for the choice at the time included the speed and reliability.

lower costs or more turnover, can then be incorporated in the following forecast. The forecast is looked at every month, which results in it being more and more accurate.”

WEIGHING UP THE WISH LISTS When implementing all the wishes, Bart and Ivo think it is important not to lose sight of the purpose of the changes. “You have to keep asking yourself what it’s being used for,” says Bart. For instance, reporting to the group pulls things in a different direction compared to the local accountability requirements. “The countries have to report to the group twelve times a year. That should have priority over the local accountability requirements, where the local organization only has to report once a year.” “If you look at all the options in the package,” says Ivo, “your first instinct is to make it all too complex. It’s better to keep things simple. It’s more understandable, more efficient, and easier to exchange.”

CURIOUS? ANDREAS IS HAPPY TO SHARE HIS EXPERIENCES VIA ANDREAS.NEDERHOED@FINEXT.NL

LEARN MORE ABOUT CONSOLIDATION AT THE TERBERG GROUP? <

“KEEP IT SIMPLE. THEN IT’S MORE UNDERSTANDABLE, EFFICIENT, AND EXCHANGEABLE.” ROLLING FORECAST The family business would like to take a lot more steps with the platform, such as setting up the planning process. Bart is very much in favor of a rolling forecast. “Everyone is really busy during the budgeting cycle in September, but I want the organization to keep its eye on the future at all times. When you make an eighteen-month forecast in June, you’ve already got the first version of your budget. So the management can take a look at that already. The feedback from the management, such as asking for

DETAILED PLANNING AT THE

JIFFY GROUP The Jiffy Group operates worldwide, providing a broad range of products for the horticulture sector. The organization would like to see more details about its product range in its financial and commercial reporting. To that end, this international organization is making the switch from Essbase on-premise to PBCS in the cloud. TEXT: DANIELLE GRUIJS

“In practical terms, a cloud-based solution is attractive,” explains Dirk-Jan Bax of the Jiffy Group about their choice of PBCS (Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Services). “The initial investment is lower, the scalability is better, and the software upgrades are dealt with automatically, so you always have the latest functionality.” The Jiffy Group, which has its head office in Kristiansand in Norway, supplies environmentally friendly propagation systems, hydroponic systems, containers, and substrates to clients worldwide. The organization uses renewable resources and bio-based materials such as peat, coconut, pulp, and other forms of biomass.

REPORTING MODULE Jiffy Group is positive about the added functionality in the planning solution. “We can create reports and analyses much easier now. The analysis capability was already available in Hyperion Essbase to some extent, but now there is even greater depth with more details available per dimension. The reporting module means more added value.” The dimensions are imported automatically via PBCS, subsequently using FDMEE to load the data. The new planning tool therefore saves a lot of time. “Ultimately, from the point of view of finance, you’ve got one goal,” concludes Dirk-Jan. “To add value and serve your customers. And this solution helps us do that.”

FINANCIAL AND COMMERCIAL REPORTING This international organization has chosen a combination of financial and commercial reporting in their application. “Depending on their authorization profile, users can now use various reports, irrespective of whether those are more financially oriented or sales focused,” explains Dirk-Jan. “The user organization received this very positively.” The commercial reports give details such as production and sales quantities, as well as saying which sales staff have sold how much of which products. “We want to use the sales reports to give a clear picture of all the dimensions,” says Dirk-Jan. “Where we used to stop at the level of the product groups in Hyperion Essbase, we can now drill down to the item level to see which product has been sold from which warehouse, at what price and with what margin.”

A COMBINATION OF TWO DATABASES That much detail does impose demands on the underlying databases. To maintain the performance of the detailed reports, a special solution was therefore created by combining two different types of databases. The calculations are first done at the lowest level in the block storage database and then dynamically aggregated to the highest level in the aggregate storage database.

Dirk-Jan Bax from the Jiffy Group

CURIOUS? MARTIN IS HAPPY TO SHARE HIS EXPERIENCES VIA MARTIN.DE.HAAN@FINEXT.NL

LEARN MORE ABOUT PLANNING AT THE JIFFY GROUP?

This combination is particularly necessary for the sales reports. “It means we don’t just get the details down to the product level, but also do the calculations on the sales database,” Dirk-Jan tells us. “Take calculations such as year-to-date and currency conversions. Calculating and reporting are really fast too, by the way. Both databases are used to their full potential.”

KEEP MOVING DURING

RUSH HOUR Your financial systems have to perform. Not only throughout the month, but in particular during the peak periods in the financial calendar. How can you avoid delays and unexpected bottlenecks? Hitch a ride with Gabor Wieringa and Reinder Riemersma and discover what they encounter along the way. TEXT: GABOR WIERINGA & REINDER RIEMERSMA

DEVELOPMENTS VARIABLE CAPACITY IN THE CLOUD 1. Autoscaling Financial applications in particular can benefit from autoscaling because these are prime examples of applications that load the servers irregularly. They have peak loads at the month and year ends, but use little or no resources during the other days of the month. This means that you could use automatic downscaling, in which you use fewer CPUs and less memory if for example less than 10% of the available resources are utilized for a lengthy period. This can save costs. 2. Scheduled Scaling Scheduled scaling lets you proactively increase the number of CPUs and the amount of memory for a short time, for instance before a month or year end. That means you can be sure of good performance during the peak period. Temporary upscaling was available before, but the whole system then needed to be restarted. Now you can adjust the capacity without any impact on the business.

MORE AND MORE IN MEMORY In-memory is fantastic for performance. There is however a potential danger: whatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s done in-memory stays in-memory. If anything goes wrong with the server, the memory will be wiped and so will the data. You must make sure that you can store data quickly enough, whether thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s in the cloud or on your own hardware.

TOOLS PERIODIC MAINTENANCE Financial systems are always evolving, which means you have to maintain your systems periodically. For example, cleaning up the application, carrying out trend analyses of the data growth and updating the application to later versions.

STRESS TESTING If major functionality or a lot of data is added, stress testing can help estimate how performance will be impacted. This lets you avoid delays at peak periods, when it is important to be able to rely on the performance of your environment. Stress tests are also a smart move when making choices about additional functionality or upgrades. And regular stress testing lets you create a performance benchmark directly, as well as giving you a good picture of the status of the environment.

FROM PERCEPTIONS TO FACTS What is a delay, exactly? A few seconds can seem like ages. The perception of what is slow varies from one person to the next. Performance measurements give a clear picture of how long a report takes to produce. A baseline measurement and clear KPIs help get the facts out into the open. How long should it take to open a report? And does that vary with the type of report?

HITCH A RIDE WITH GABOR AND REINDER? PLEASE CONTACT THEM AT REINDER.RIEMERSMA@SWAPSUPPORT.NL OR GABOR.WIERINGA@SWAPSUPPORT.NL

SEAMLESS INTEGRATION AT

INTERXION With 45 data centers in 13 European cities, Interxion needs a reliable and flexible consolidation process. Seamless integration of the general ledger with the consolidation not only saves time but also creates a clear audit trail. TEXT: DANIELLE GRUIJS

Interxion is growing quickly, largely due to the rise of cloud services. “It may be called ‘in the cloud,’ but the data and software are in a data center,” explains Sander Rijs from Interxion. “We aren’t a software company, but a service provider who other companies can transfer their IT infrastructure to. We provide space, power, cooling, and security,” says Niels Jansen from Interxion.

The audit trail offers certainty as well. Traceability was one of the reasons why the organization chose the direct integration. “We want a reliable way of getting the data in HFM,” says Niels. “We can now be confident that nobody can access the figures. This helps us achieve SOx compliance, but we would have made the same choice without the SOx obligation. It means we can be certain that the figures are correct.”

To make the consolidation process go as smoothly as possible, Interxion uses a powerful form of data integration with the help of Oracle FDMEE. “We now have a direct link between the general ledger and the consolidation solution,” says Niels. “That saves us a considerable amount of time in the month-end work.”

TEN THOUSAND ENTRIES AUTOMATED Direct integration simplifies the consolidation process. “The operating companies provide 99% of our data. The balance amounts come straight from the general ledger into HFM, the consolidation and reporting solution,” says Sander. The Group Reporting Team then merely allocates various costs. “The reporting team makes about ten journal entries per quarter, while we get tens of thousands of balances from the general ledger through FDMEE.” In addition to saving time, this method of data integration also provides flexibility and ease of use for the countries. Niels: “The countries upload their figures from the general ledger. Later changes from the countries can easily be incorporated into the consolidated figures. Updating the reports is then just a matter of pressing a button.” It helps that a single chart of accounts is used throughout the organization; changes to the chart of accounts, the cost center structure and the mapping are implemented by the head office for all countries in one go.

Niels Jansen and Sander Rijs from Interxion

CURIOUS? VICTOR IS HAPPY TO SHARE HIS EXPERIENCES VIA VICTOR.BRANDSEMA@FINEXT.NL

LEARN MORE ABOUT CONSOLIDATION

“IT MEANS WE CAN BE CERTAIN THAT THE FIGURES ARE CORRECT.” STABILITY AND CERTAINTY After the implementation by Finext, Interxion is outsourcing the functional and technical support of HFM and FDMEE to Swap Support. “We want to guarantee good technical support,” says Niels. “The system is very stable, we rarely have issues. We are opting for external support because it provides certainty for us. We want to avoid getting behind on our reporting processes due to technical issues.”

AT INTERXION? <

OPTIMIZING PROJECT MANAGEMENT AT

BOSKALIS NL When the Dutch infrastructure division of Boskalis starts structuring its project forecasts, they also want to keep the flexibility of the existing Excel forecasts. In addition to SAP BPC for reporting to the group, the Dutch construction division has created its own platform in Vena. This makes the project reporting faster and less susceptible to errors. TEXT: DANIELLE GRUIJS

“Project management is our core business,” says Carlo van Noort, CFO at Boskalis NL. This division of Boskalis focuses on road building and civil engineering in the Netherlands. “We do all sorts of projects, large and small. Infrastructure projects are always different and each project has its own budget control report.”

MISSING LINK BETWEEN SOURCE SYSTEM, EXCEL, AND SAP BPC For these forecasts the project controllers use Excel. “The process was not very efficient,” says Erik van Deursen of Boskalis NL. “Additionally, there was no central data storage,” adds Rody van den Bosch of Boskalis NL. “Our mailbox acted as our archive.”

“THE STRENGTH OF VENA IS THAT IT TURNS THE EXCEL SPAGHETTI INTO A STRUCTURED ENVIRONMENT.”

THE PROJECT CONTROLLER ROLE The Vena platform helps to properly flesh out the role of the project controller. “The role of the project controller is changing. The environment in which we operate as Dutch infrastructure companies is complex; we work with small margins of about three to four percent so the margin between profit and loss on a project is small. That demands detailed control of the project,” says Carlo. “The strength of this tool is that it turns the Excel spaghetti into a structured environment, enabling the kind of project management we want.”

USER-FRIENDLY AND STRUCTURED “The bottom line is that Excel is the most user-friendly and widely used tool worldwide. Excel can do a lot, but also lets people take a lot of liberties. The strength of Vena is in developing a structure within that user-friendly environment. This enables us to align frameworks with the way we want to work,” concludes Carlo.

Therefore, the construction division went in search of an additional tool. “We wanted to embed the forecasts in a more structured environment,” explains Carlo. “Excel is very user-friendly, so people started using all sorts of variants. We also wanted better anchoring of the link between the project tool and the financial system.” Erik agrees: “We were looking for the missing link between the source system, Excel, and SAP BPC.”

SWIFTLY OPERATIONAL Boskalis NL has chosen Vena Solutions. The additional platform is already delivering the desired results. “The new situation was quickly accepted by the users,” says Rody. “The environment has barely changed, but you get extra options.” Over a hundred budget control reports are used, which are now structured via Vena. “There is a better picture of where we are in the process,” says Erik, “which saves me a lot of time during the period close.” Rody confirms this: “The errors in the forecasts are caught earlier, the period ends are smoother, and the users are already finding their own mistakes. That lets us change our focus; we do not have to look for errors in the reports, but instead can look at what is happening in the project.”

Rody van den Bosch, Erik van Deursen and Carlo van Noort from Boskalis NL

CURIOUS? BENNO IS HAPPY TO SHARE HIS EXPERIENCES VIA BENNO.VAN.INGEN@FINEXT.NL

LEARN MORE ABOUT STRUCTURING PROJECT INFORMATION AT BOSKALIS NL? <

5 QUESTIONS FOR

INFOTHEEK When Infotheek Group, the largest circular-economy IT business in Europe, was looking for a reporting and consolidation solution, they chose Sigma Conso. The organization is still in the implementation phase, but they are already experiencing the first benefits. Alwin Berkhout of Finext talks to Hjalmar den Ouden and John Jong of Infotheek Group. TEXT: DANIELLE GRUIJS

INFOTHEEK GROUP WAS USING EXCEL FOR ITS MONTHLY CONSOLIDATION. WHY DID YOU WANT TO MAKE THE SWITCH TO A PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT SOLUTION? We want to have better control of the financial reporting. It isnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t really possible to use Excel to consolidate a business of this size: you need a professional tool. The problem areas are the accuracy, completeness, and timeliness of the monthly figures and management reports. In addition, the intercompany matching is not optimal at the moment. We need unambiguous reports so that we can get accurate and reliable insights from our consolidated monthly, quarterly, and annual figures. In Excel this was slow, unstructured, and not reliable enough.

AFTER A TOOL SELECTION PROCESS, YOU CHOSE SIGMA CONSO. WHY THAT PACKAGE IN PARTICULAR? Sigma Conso looks simple and user-friendly, but at the same time, it is a quick and reliable system that has earned its spurs. Additionally, the intercompany matching at the transaction level is a big plus. This is important for us because we want to prevent mismatches in the intercompany balances. Using the intercompany module at the transaction level lets us match these differences carefully before starting the consolidation process. We like the fact that it is a SaaS solution: as soon as you’re logged in, you have everything at your disposal. You also no longer have to worry about hardware, application management, or maintenance.

YOU ARE STILL IN THE IMPLEMENTATION PHASE. HOW DO YOU LIKE IT SO FAR? We can already see that the uniformity of reporting is going to be highly beneficial for us. We get insights more quickly, not only into the figures but also into processes that are not running optimally. For instance, we noticed during the implementation that the periods for entering the invoices were incorrect. This will now become more visible, so that we can make adjustments if necessary. With an advanced tool like this, you can look at the future as well as the present and the past, and also predict trends for the future. In Excel, we lost so much time that no one got around to forecasting. We can also see the improved hierarchical entity structures. Take the budgets: with this tool we can enforce a single format for the budget straight away, giving the budgets more depth and breadth. Entering the budget has also become a lot simpler.

INFOTHEEK HAS RECENTLY MADE TWO MAJOR ACQUISITIONS. HOW ARE THEY IMPACTING THE FINANCIAL PROCESSES? The acquisitions added two businesses of the same size. We have grown to an annual turnover of 700 million and we consolidate roughly 35 entities. These new businesses have their own consolidation challenges, but we are now using the same, properly functioning consolidation process everywhere. Adding the acquired businesses was relatively simple – like adding another coat to the coatrack. Immediately connecting an acquisition up to the same consolidation system saves us a lot of time; even a small entity with just a few transactions per month can get time-consuming otherwise.

WHERE WILL INFOTHEEK’S FINANCIAL DEPARTMENT BE IN TWO YEARS? We expect to be making optimal use of the new system by the end of this year. Not just for the consolidation process, but for the cash flow too. That is the next step that we will be working on. We also hope that the underlying foundations can be taken up to the next level. At the moment we have a broad diversity of ERP systems, creating islands that each have their own financial flow. If we transfer these source systems to a single platform, we will get even more structure. As a larger Small Medium Enterprise, you have to be prepared for anything and this tool helps us structure the data streams and get better insights.

CURIOUS? ALWIN IS HAPPY TO SHARE HIS EXPERIENCES VIA ALWIN.BERKHOUT@FINEXT.NL

TOOL SELECTION: THE 5 KEY

PITFALLS TO STEER CLEAR OF This is a meeting you do not want to be seen at. It is not often that you sit at the table with the CFO, and now itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s for all the wrong reasons. The Performance Management package that was purchased with a lot of fanfare six months ago has turned out to be a dud. Despite the slick demo, it seems that the solution cannot even do the bare minimum of what it should. The vendor seems to have different priorities. Colleagues from other departments have already lost faith and are quickly and strategically distancing themselves. Now you have to explain it to the CFO. What could you have done to prevent this meeting? TEXT: WIM HEUVELMAN

1. DON’T BE DAZZLED BY THE ANALYSTS’ RESULTS “Magic quadrants” or “waves” may seem to be a signpost to a safe choice for a new solution. After all, who has ever gotten in trouble for choosing a solution that was labelled as a market leader by a respectable analyst? However, many analysts’ reports on the choice of a Performance Management solution offer merely an illusory certainty. Almost 75% of any magic quadrant from Gartner is based on research among users in the United States. Unfortunately, crucial requirements for such a solution in the Netherlands are not relevant in the States. A “leader” according to US standards may not even meet the basic requirements in the Netherlands.

2. DON’T MAKE YOUR CHOICES ON YOUR OWN With the rise of cloud solutions, purchasing a new Performance Management solution seems to have become as simple as installing a new app on your phone. This makes it tempting to just buy a solution with your team of controllers, e.g. for planning and budgeting. But making this kind of purchase with just your own team is often a recipe for disaster. Other departments look at solutions from a different perspective. They ask the questions that need to be asked. A good IT department checks data security and the ownership of the data. Purchasing knows how to find hidden costs. All of these issues can become nasty surprises later on and cause major problems.

4. DON’T AUTOMATICALLY FOLLOW THE MARKET Following in the wake of your industry peers is a common phenomenon. You will find certain Performance Management solutions spread throughout an entire sector. In a market where the solutions came with a new release every few years, this seemed a safe bet. However, the world has changed. Some cloud solutions come up with new releases four times a year. New functionalities and new integrations appear every quarter. Since changes are coming so fast, automatically following the choice in your sector may mean you are lagging behind.

5. DON’T OUTSOURCE THE CHOICE TO IT Tool selections are choices that are sometimes seen as high-risk. After all, you do not want to find yourself in the situation outlined in the introduction to this article. That is why sometimes the choice is “dumped” on the IT department. It’s a tactic that hardly ever has a happy ending. The biggest problem is often not the actual choice, but the lack of commitment to that choice by the future end users. If they don’t believe in it or aren’t four-square behind it, it will be hard to make it a success.

THE WILL TO MAKE IT A SUCCESS There are thousands of reasons why a Performance Management project could fail, but there is a single reason why they succeed: the will to make the new solution a success. That desire has to grow from day one of a tool selection and it should be shared by everyone involved.

3. LOOK BEYOND THE FEATURES In many selection processes the requirements are neatly mapped out. Once everything is outlined, RFIs are dutifully sent out asking if the vendor can meet these requirements. It is a trusted best practice that unfortunately provides little useful information and does not really show the differences between solutions. You cannot get a good picture of a solution by only looking at the features. You have to drill deeper. Have a look at the characteristics of the vendor, for example. How are they financed? If there is private equity involved; how long have these individuals been on board? If the vendor has been taken over before; are the key figures who were the spiritual fathers of the solution still on board or have they cashed in and are now lounging under a palm tree? These kinds of questions tell you more about the future of a solution. Probe beyond the features, which are often no-brainers if you are looking at the right category of solutions.

WANT TO AVOID PITFALLS? PLEASE CONTACT WIM AT WIM.HEUVELMAN@FINEXT.NL

COLOPHON QNNCT

PRINT:

Connection is the key word in this magazine. Between progressive ideas and experience from the field. Between peers. And between different subject areas.

Veenman+

Finext, Plainwater, Sonum International and Swap Support invite you to connect!

TRANSLATION: Mike Wilkinson, Clare Wilkinson, Mariëlle Kakebeen, Tessera Translations

MORE INFORMATION: EDITORIAL: Martijn Meuling Monica Harmsen

CONCEPT AND TEXT:

www.finext.nl www.plainwater.nl www.sonum-int.com www.swapsupport.nl www.qwinc.nl

Danielle Gruijs, Springfish

THIS EDITION’S CONTRIBUTORS: VISUAL EDITOR: Jacqueline Wissing, Springfish

PHOTOGRAPHY: Patrick Nagtegaal Kees-Jan Bakker Chris Bonis MLBfoto Ron Jenner

ILLUSTRATIONS: Mark Moget, Uberhaupt.nl Jacqueline Wissing, Springfish

DESIGN: Mark Moget, Uberhaupt.nl

OUR PARTNERS:

Bas Jansen, Stef Jansen in de Wal, Jan Nico de Hoop, Jonathan Aardema, Roy Piek, Wietse Mol, Hans Geertsma, Arjette Eenhuizen, Benno van Ingen, Wesley Schulte, Olaf Looije, Naida Sadžak, Tiemen van der Tuijn, Alwin Berkhout, Stijn Gabriëls, Gert-Jan van den Berg, Paul Damen, Daniël Sanders, Bastiaan Sanders, Leon den Braber, Patrick Tullemans, Eije Wiersema, Arjan van Eijck, Andreas Nederhoed, Martin de Haan, Gabor Wieringa, Reinder Riemersma, Victor Brandsema, Wim Heuvelman, Martijn Schermers, Kimball Obèr, Minke van Velzen, Beatriz Rodriguez, Maaike Brouwer, Rogier Louter, Roland van den Berg, Anita Grit, Mahmut Kina and Jeroen Beentjes. We acknowledge that not everyone is alike and we respect different opinions. This magazine offers space for these individual opinions, which do not necessarily meet our joint vision.

Finext and Sigma Conso are proud to start their 4th joined project in a very short time!

Discover the CPM solution of Sigma Conso with many predefined standard functionality

â&#x20AC;˘

Consolidation and reporting: software for statutory consolidation and

â&#x20AC;˘

Intercompany reconciliation: software for reconciliation on transaction level,

â&#x20AC;˘

management reporting which is fully customizable to your specific needs.

offering you a decentralized process and a collaborative management.

Budgeting and strategic planning: software with advanced functionality

for performance analysis, business intelligence and forecasting.

www.sigmaconso.com

Sigma Conso Netherlands, Amstelveenseweg 760, 1081 JK Amsterdam, +31 6 14 67 12 16

EFFECTIVE CONTROL SUPPORT, HOSTING & INSTALLATION

ADVICE & IMPLEMENTATION RELIABLE FIGURES

CLEAR INSIGHTS STABLE SYSTEMS

FAST REPORTS

INFORMATION SYNERGY & ARCHITECTURE

GLOBAL PROJECTS & ROLL-OUT

INTEGRATED VALUE CHAIN FOR PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT In-depth knowledge in all areas of Performance Management is crucial to enable streamlined reporting and control. We combine our knowledge and experience of information synergy and architecture, advice and implementation, hosting and installation as well as support in one integrated value chain for Performance Management for both national as well as international customers. Each of us is specialized in our own disciplines and united by our way of working. Realizing effective control, based on reliable figures, fast reports, and secure applications for any type of organization.

WWW.FINEXT.NL WWW.PLAINWATER.NL WWW.SONUM-INT.COM WWW.SWAPSUPPORT.NL WWW.QWINC.NL