HD Supply increases consistency in forecasting and planning across the business
“SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation helps us drive greater efficiency in our planning and reporting processes, and enhance cost controls.”
Mark Schneider, Senior Manager of Financial Planning and Analysis, HD Supply Facilities Maintenance
CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
- Enhance ability of managers to positively affect productivity
- Reduce time spent managing planning and reporting software
- Enable employees to access source data
- Eliminate need to manually aggregate and transfer between applications
- Empower employees to use software without training
- Use more effective cost-management measures to achieve business goals
- Boost business user accountability for planning and for reviewing results
OBJECTIVES
- Implement software that will evolve with the company’s changing internal requirements and customer- facing needs
- Create a user-friendly planning and reporting environment
WHY AKILI/SAP
- Support for changing financial reporting needs
- Integration with existing SAP ERP application and Microsoft Excel
BENEFITS
- Lowered the number of support calls during the planning and report generation process
- Reduced data-entry errors and miscommunications during the planning process for selling, general, and administrative expenses (SG&A)
- Increased consistency in forecasting and planning across the business
- Gained better insight into and accountability for SG&A across each business area
- Eliminated discrepancies through a single source for headcount reporting
- Empowered employees to easily conduct detailed analysis and arrive at accurate conclusions quickly
- Enabled managers to clearly and consistently explain cost variations
- Increased capabilities to better align costs with commercial days and catch forecasting “misses” before they get built into the annual plan
IMPLEMENTATION HIGHLIGHTS
- Implementation in approximately five months
- 250 users
- Quality assurance and training ownership by customer
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