Retail and distribution company got to a whole new level of budgeting in Anaplan

A growing retail and distribution 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 has increased.

For a long time, the Company 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.

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 project, a decrease in the expected time of budget making (by about 60%) took place and the expected number of errors in budgeting and calculations went down.
• Data transparency increased due to the drill-down capabilities inside Anaplan, while the dependence on IT services for setting up and developing solutions decreased.
• The client’s team shifted from periodic planning to rolling forecast. Planning improvements allow the company to keep track of changes in 1-month increments; several types of related budgets are now used – annual, strategic, and operational planning.