In order to harmonize and integrate internal and external reporting as well as planning at all of the group‘s international units, the company, together with the arcplan partner Selbach Information Systems GmbH, created a management information system (MIS) based on SAP Business Information Warehouses (SAP BW) and arcplan Enterprise analytics. This information system makes an application available to users at the group‘s finance, sales and marketing departments that helps them:

• improve the quality of information,
• prepare harmonized, meaningful reports based on unified data,
• carry out financial reporting throughout the group according to International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS),
• realize more reliable planning that spans countries,
• improve control over the planning processes.

Starting situation – different data sources, inconsistent reports

Not all data for internal reporting came from one database; individual reports were fed directly from the operational modules. Such parallel data management resulted in differing results, because values such as turnover were present redundantly in various modules. In addition, there was no group-wide planning system.

Areas of application – operational and strategic

The solution makes the front end for internal and external reporting available based on data from SAP BWs. Management and controlling use a unified application to access standard reports according to predefined views for balance sheets and profit and loss statements. In addition, the application feeds planning data via R/3 tables to the BW.

Benefits – globally unified planning and harmonized reporting according to IFRS

• Multilayered, meaningful group-wide reporting for more than 100 countries
• Accelerated, unified planning process.

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