Flexible Budgeting Tool Proves Invaluable for Follow-Up for Large 89-Store System in Norway

About the Customer

Coop Sørvest is Norway’s third largest consumer association measured in turnover. The head office is located at Brueland in Sandnes municipality with regional offices in Kristiansand and Haugesund. Its consumer association consists of 89 stores which had a net turnover of 5.2 billion NOK in 2017.

Situation

“In the past, I dreaded the yearly budget process enormously. With 89 store managers who need to manually update budget templates in Excel using help materials, we typically used 2-3 work weeks or more. There was also a great risk that the store managers would delete the budget template or mess up the file, which led to many hours of control during and after budgeting, “says Pål Sonesen, controller at Coop Sørvest.

Solution and Results

“With Bizview, the time spent on budget preparation has been significantly reduced, In addition to that, the quality of input has greatly improved,” Sonesen said.

“Bizview gives us a stable tool that manages large amounts of data where shop managers can work in parallel without the risk of information being overwritten or lost. The budgets are designed with all data in the model, and it is easy to follow up at regional and store levels. We can extract updated reports at all levels of the organization at any time.”

Integrated with both human resources and accounting system

The budgeting in Bizview is integrated with both the human resource system Stafftuner and Coop Sørvest’s Microsoft Dynamics AX accounting system. The team no longer needs individual spreadsheets and reports that must be handled on the side and then manually enter into the budget simulation. Today, Coop Sørvest gets these numbers directly in Bizview. Once the budget is complete, it can easily be used for effective performance management.

Now, time is used to a greater extent on analysis and quality assurance instead of simply stacking a budget on the legs.​

“The biggest effect is the time we save, as well as less frustration in all parts of the organization,” said Sonesen. “With 142 users in the system, ease of use is central. The integration process has been simple, since we have been able to copy design from many of the templates we had before. The users are satisfied and we have greater security and control. All in all, a very successful implementation.​”

Coop Sørvest experienced the following benefits from their Bizview implementation:

• Reduced time spent with preparations to less than one week
• Increased transparency for budgeting with all data in the model
• Integrated with human resource and accounting system
• Easy to follow workflow status of regional/operating managers