Our customers
Our customers
We work tirelessly to help our customers all around the globe to make their complex simple and their slow faster, setting up businesses to be Advanced.
Discover how we share success with our customers
Industry
Fast Moving
Consumer Goods (FMCG)
Client
Unilever Global
Geographical scale
33 countries
Project scope
S&OP, Business Intelligence, Executive Dashboards
Solutions
Anaplan, Domo
Business challenge
Unilever, a manufacturer of the world’s famous brands like Rexona, Lipton, Axe, Domestos, Knorr, operates in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry, one of the largest and most competitive industrial sectors in the world. Managing multi-category businesses across the globe requires flexible and agile tools to maintain a robust and effective Sales & Operations Planning process.
Solution
The Anaplan platform was chosen to support and streamline an effective S&OP as well as accelerate the whole process of preparing, aligning and evaluating operational plans in businesses.
Implementing DOMO for the S&OP process was meant to encourage more effective collaboration, faster reaction to ever-changing market dynamics and greater visibility of crucial data and metrics to respective teams so that crucial action can be taken in real time.
“Excellent tool [Anaplan], this is one of the best I`ve seen so far. This brings integration, transparency and insights.”
Alfie Vivian CCVP Refreshments – North America
“Now you have one process across all brands [with Domo]. You are able at any level of business to get the information you need to make a decision.”
Matthew Battista – Global Demand Planning Manager
Industry
Fast Moving
Consumer Goods (FMCG)
Client
Unilever USA
Service:
Development and launch of ML-enabled sales forecasting models.
Regular technical support and forecast refresh (business as usual).
Complementing solutions:
Anaplan, Domo
Business challenge
Unilever USA is the biggest and most complex operating company in Unilever managing more than 200 brands. Having such a diverse portfolio which includes beauty and personal care products, food and refreshments, and home care categories, makes sales forecasting one of the most challenging and time-consuming processes in Unilever USA.
Forecasting thousands of SKUs by channels and customers has always been reliant on conventional statistical methods and the expertise of demand planners and sales managers, allowing for human error. This has resulted in fluctuating forecast accuracy and further negative financial implications.
Solution
Machine learning enabled forecasting models were developed to transition a business wide statistical forecasting to a new process powered by the most advanced ML algorithms. Within the project, custom models were created to generate forecasts for forecasts for the US and world’s biggest retailers.
For each custom model, there was a unique set of input data including point-of-sale sales, inventory, promo investments, the number of retail stores, and national holidays. The richness of the internal and external input data helped algorithms learn quickly and generate a forecast with higher accuracy and less effort.
The Domo and Anaplan platforms were chosen to help accommodate the new forecasting process end-to-end for top customers. These platforms assist with everything from running the code for all models, disaggregating it and making corrections to visualizing the forecast for all end users. Having the brand-new ML forecast visualized on interactive dashboards allowed demand planners and analysts to understand what influences each forecast driver. This understanding sped up the adoption process significantly.
Apart from custom models, a universal ML baseline forecasting model was developed and launched to cover baseline forecasting processes across all categories and customers. Thanks to the special desagregation dashboard at Anaplan, demand planning managers can verify their newly created ML-baseline by drilling it down to specific SKUs separated by retailers, compare with previous years and much more.
“Moving to AI-enabled technologies in cornerstone business processes like forecasting is a high priority in our business transformation agenda. With this project, we’ve come a long way and luckily are now at a stage of making a ML-enabled forecasting business as usual.”
Integrated Operations Lead, Unilever USA
All results apply to customers, categories and teams selected to measure effectiveness of the new technology and process.
AUGMENTO
ML-ENABLED FORECASTING
Industry
Alcoholic beverages
Client
ASG
Geographical scale
Russia
Project scope
S&OP audit
Solutions
Management consulting
Business challenge
ASG is one of the leading alcoholic beverage companies in Russia managing its own brands and distributing world famous brands in Russia and the CIS. Significant growth in recent years demanded an upgrade across core business processes, including Sales & Operations planning. This process was somewhat flawed specifically concerning existing cycle length, issues related to running S&OP meetings effectively, confusion in roles and responsibilities as well as discipline issues. Therefore intervention was required to reveal setbacks and advise on how to rectify them.
Solution
An extensive 1,5-month-long S&OP audit was conducted with a particular close-up into one S&OP meeting called PMR (Portfolio Management Review) in order to understand how to reshape it for the good of the whole cycle.
A self-assessment survey was distributed to key members in S&OP to complement a S&OP maturity assessment and maturity score which was granted to the company upon completion of the project.
The final report included detailed diagnostics of the current S&OP cycle and advice on how to optimize it downwards, a deep dive into all S&OP meetings with a set of recommended improvements needed and special advice on behavioral and disciplinary actions to be taken without delay.
Industry
Retail & Distribution
Client
Nevada Group
Geographical scale
Russia
Project scope
FP&A with a detailed Commercial Planning
Solutions
Anaplan
Business challenge
The Nevada Group is a growing retail and distribution company operating in the Russian Far East. The company faces increasing competition from local players and the imminent prospect of federal players entering the region.
Under these conditions the role of making appropriate and effective management decision based on modern financial planning and forecasting tools is increasing.
For a long time, the сompany had been using Excel© as a corporate budgeting tool. It was inexpensive and ubiquitous but did not allow for work in interconnected budget models or recalculation of the entire model correctly with the minimum number of errors when changing one or several parameters. With this in mind, it was decided to implement a specialized performance management tool – Anaplan.
Solution
Anaplan, being an integrated planning and budgeting tool, was implemented. It made it possible to organize a continuous forecasting process, reduce the time needed to prepare budgets and improve the granularity and transparency of the budgeting process.
“As a result of the Anaplan implementation project, an analytical decision-making support system was created, the role and responsibility of budget holders increased due to their closer involvement in the planning process. Labor costs on the planning function has been reduced several times, and the time released is used for analysis and creating new initiatives.”
Kirill Miazov, Deputy CFO
Industry
Healthcare services
Client
Medsi
Geographical scale
Russia
Project scope
Financial planning & Analysis (FP&A)
Solutions
Anaplan
Business challenge
Prior to the implementation of Anaplan, this company used Excel© to support its budgeting process. The capabilities of this tool became insufficient for several reasons: more detailed information was needed for making management decisions as well as simultaneous access for a large number of users (dozens of users by the budget holders).
The company needed an automated financial planning platform that would provide all budget process participants with the opportunity to simultaneously work with a single dataset, single directory and, most importantly, implement the company’s structure and budget formation logic.
Solution
Anaplan’s multi-purpose role:
1. Effective business management at all levels – from divisions and branches of the company to senior executives.
2. A tool for evaluating financial performance of individual business areas, companies, departments and responsible persons.
3. A Unified data environment for the preparation of budget data and reporting, taking into account the features of the model for each type of activity, including reporting under IFRS.
4. Linking budgets with indicators of production activity for all activities.
“The introduction of Anaplan has made it possible to achieve the strategic goals of the assets of Medsi Group of Companies by planning and optimally allocating financial resources, coordinating the activities of departments, monitoring the achievement of goals and motivating responsible managers at various levels. We have achieved a reduction in the labor intensity and timing of the budget process, as well as improving the quality, reliability and validity of budget information and reporting for making management decisions.”
Lubov Pryanishnikova, Head of Budgeting and Controlling of Medsi Group of Companies
Industry
Construction materials
Client
LafargeHolcim
Geographical scale
Russia
Project scope
Budgeting and Sales planning | Integrated business planning coving HR, Capex, Logistics, Production, Purchasing planning
Solutions
Anaplan
Business challenge
LafargeHolcim is the world’s leader in manufacturing building materials and providing complex solutions for the construction industry. As a response to market challenges, the company develops and sells universal and innovative products: cement, aggregates, concrete blends for building oil and gas facilities, plants, skyscrapers, highways, low-rise buildings and private residences.
In a bid to increase effectiveness of the current planning process and react faster in a very competitive environment, the business needed a platform for planning automation to consolidate detailed plans efficiently and support a cross- functional collaboration around planning and budgeting.
Solution
The Anaplan integrated planning platform was chosen and implemented to address the following project objectives:
“The project aimed at launching an IT-platform to power an effective planning and forecasting process while reducing time to make rational business decisions.
As a result of the project, we are able to effectively manage our planning process and people while the time for collecting and consolidating data was reduced.”
Marina Orekhova, Head of Controlling LafargeHolcim Russia
“I’m definitely a fan of this platform. It is capable of automating most of the planning areas we needed. We are eager to expand the solution to new processes where the cost of individual decisions is high.
Equipping the team with the right tools, we will be set to address everchanging internal and external challenges in order to achieve our business goals.”
Maxim Goncharov, CEO LafargeHolcim Russia
Industry
Brewing
Client
Baltika, part
of the Carlsberg
Group
Geographical scale
Russia
Project scope
Integrated
Financial Planning
IT PLATFORM
Anaplan
Business challenge
Baltika, part of the Carlsberg Group, is implementing its “Strategy 2020-2022”. Accelerating Baltika’s digital business transformation has recently become pivotal due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the fact that part of the team
started working remotely.
One of the largest and most important initiatives within the plan became the project of automating an integrated financial forecasting (P&L). The business team set the following requirements for a future IT platform and the project overall
Solution
Thanks to an integrated planning platform Anaplan, a tailored solution was developed and launched according to Baltika’s specifications:
“Financial forecast is a backbone process, and any shortcomings within financial forecasting affect business. As our business grows, so does the complexity of the processes which cause automated solutions to be more and more efficient. Our goal was to grow transparency and speed in making and managing the P&L with a granularity which was never possible without an integrated, well-structured tool. Parallel to this we aim at significantly improving the way we collaborate across all involved departments. Launching a flexible platform such as Anaplan designed for planning and dynamic control has become even more topical nowadays.”
Elizaveta Palitsyna, Operations controlling Director for Eastern Europe
Industry
Alcoholic beverages
Client
ROUST
Geographical scale
Russia
Project scope
Sales | Promo | Production and Logistics | Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A)
Solutions
Anaplan
Business challenge
ROUST, the largest alcohol company in Central and Eastern Europe and the second largest vodka producer in the world, did their financial and operational planning in Excel© which led to wasted time and significant labor costs. A “what-if analysis” of various functional blocks was carried out using multiple poorly connected spreadsheets which did not allow for synchronization and simultaneous user work in real time.
Solution
The implementation of Anaplan streamlined planning of product sales with the subsequent calculation of production volumes, cost of goods sold (COGS) and distribution of total costs down to the level of SKU and customer.
The process of integrated scenario planning of various functional units within a single model was introduced: sales, promo, COGS, logistics, OPEX.
Currently, Advanced (as part of the roadmap for developing an already launched solution) is implementing an automation of demand forecasting and Trade promo planning in Anaplan. The goal of the project is to link Sales and Promo planning with the existing financial model and thereby accommodate a comprehensive automation of the Sales & Operations planning (S&OP) process on a single platform.
As part of the ongoing project, individual customer forecasting models, regional planning, an integrated solution for collecting inputs from all process participants (brand marketing, trade marketing, sales department, finance), online P&L recalculation, scenario planning will be brought to life.
The company’s commercial team will receive an effective tool for demand planning and promo activities, and the Financial team will be able to work quickly with P&L in any necessary detail (up to the client, SKU) with a set of scenario components for each of the articles. An emphasis will be given to analyzing the effect of promo activities (Trade spend), ultimately deriving data from the price on the shelf to Net contribution of brand / counterpart.
“The key to the success of a business automation project is to maximize business participation with a minimal IT involvement. Anaplan brings this formula to perfection.”
Dmitry Maruev, CIO