Houghton Mifflin Harcourt utilizes SAP BPC solution to forecast revenue amidst economic uncertainties
“Akili and Protiviti have been invaluable partners to HMH. They have helped us implement tools to better understand and plan for the impact uncertain economic times may have on our business.”
MJ Rivera, Vice President, K-12 Finance, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
- HMH could no longer base their business planning on historical data, sales pipeline information, and industry textbook-adoption calendars
- The SAP implementation allowed HMH to account for multiple budget scenarios influenced by macro-economic trends creating adaptable, flexible forecasting
- HMH’s overall forecasting of financials was relatively accurate when the entire hierarchy of products was rolled up. However, production decisions are made for individual products, some of which were drastically off forecast, which negatively impacted profit margins
OBJECTIVES
- Support a detailed, bottoms-up revenue plan, but enable high-level adjustments mid-cycle in response to changing economic conditions
IMPLEMENTATION HIGHLIGHTS
- The accuracy in sales and revenue forecasting that HMH is experiencing has prompted consideration of an cost of goods sold implementation with Akili in the near future
WHY AKILI/SAP
- HMH was a Protiviti client first and took Protiviti’s recommendation of Akili to be their SAP BPC implementation partner
BENEFITS
- The BPC solution now recreates fast, timely, and adaptable “what if” scenarios for budgeting and forecasting on a monthly basis
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