Mineral fertilizers producer managed to build and automate the Integrated Business Planning process in Anaplan

This case was for one of the world leaders in producing mineral fertilizers. The Group includes production and logistics assets, port terminals and trading houses. The company supplies its products to all continents, and since 2016 it has been developing its own dealer network.

With production and sales volumes growing, the volatility in the mineral fertilizer market increased, and having a strategic focus on digitalisation, the company has faced the challenge of improving the quality of planning, modernising and automating planning processes and monitoring the plan execution.

There are more than 100 people from different functions in the 8 Group companies involved in the processes. Before the project, the work was constrained by the need to create and maintain many disparate Excel files, by the lack of a single up-to-date version of the plan, and an unstructured exchange of files by e-mail. There was a lack of efficiency in approving the plan and manual planning errors were taking place.

As the process was mostly maintained manually (more than 2000 Excel spreadsheets per year), it was not up to the challenges the company was facing. This highlighted the need for a unified sales and operations planning management tool based on a modern and flexible IT platform. Anaplan was chosen upon analyzing relevant IT-systems and their evaluation by a number of criteria and Planingo was chosen as an implementation partner.

Anaplan platform implementation was divided into two parts: first an operational planning process for sales and production on a one-month horizon was launched, then the solution was supplemented by an annual business planning process and monitoring the operational plan execution and analytical reports.

For the trading houses and the production function, scenario planning functionality was implemented for the changes in production and/or sales, with the ability to estimate changes in output and margins relating to the plan.

As part of the operational planning, optimization algorithms were consistently implemented using the Anaplan Optimizer tool. These algorithms calculate, under the existing assumptions and constraints, optimal plans for sales and shipments for a period of one month, and production for an up to one day. The calculation takes less than 5 minutes. This functionality allows users to select the most marginal sales and production schedule, load the capacities to 100% and fix the intra-group consumption requirements. Using the built-in calculations, the resulting plans are assessed for feasibility, including the availability of the railcar fleet and port transhipment capacities.

The process of collecting information on production, sales and shipments actuals (both within the planning period and at the end of it) was set up and standardised, and integrations with the relevant corporate IT systems were implemented.

In addition, the Workflow functionality was launched to break down the plan creation process in Anaplan into specific tasks and steps. Prior to the start of a step, each employee receives an email notification with instructions and deadlines, and comments from performers and future tasks for the processes are available for viewing in the system.

• A unified management environment has been created: there is no longer a separate process for creating a production plan or a separate process for planning sales. Now there is an integrated planning process that combines production, sales and shipping plans.
• Automation of calculations, control and analytics, as well as the use of algorithms have improved the quality of planning, made analytics available in every aspect and brought transparent management decision-making.
• Elimination of Excel and unsystematic communication allowed to minimize errors and the human factor, increased the speed of planning and accountability for the figures.
• All data in one place: the most up-to-date data is available to any user at any time within his/her access rights. No more requesting and waiting for information, dependency on the availability of colleagues, reconciling file versions and relying on the reliability of the mail agent.
• Transparency of the modernised S&OP process: project team members looked critically at the established process, learned about the difficulties people from other departments were having and became co-authors of the new approach. Employees from different divisions began to better understand the S&OP process and everyone’s role in it. This effect is difficult to digitise, but even more difficult to overestimate.
• The integration of operational planning and annual business planning into a single system makes it possible to effectively track both the execution of plans and their connection to the company’s goals and creates the basis for a prospective transition to rolling planning.