JUB Group Works With insightsoftware Partner Result to Elevate its Planning, Forecasting, and Reporting with Bizview

In Brief

• JUB Group’s planning processes were manual, mostly in Excel and their own application, and time-consuming, taking more time to complete.
• JUB turned to insightsoftware partner Result to find a better planning solution to streamline planning cadences and increase agility.
• Result evaluated JUB’s goals and provided a Bizview implementation that offered greater planning flexibility and collaboration.
• Since implementation, JUB has shortened the planning process, implemented twice yearly forecasts, and enjoys more effective team collaboration.
• Bizview has facilitated the easy integration of newly acquired business units into JUB’s ERP and existing budgeting and planning processes.

JUB Group is a successful international corporation, based in Slovenia, with an almost 150-year history in the production of paints. Its mission is to create innovative, energy-saving, environmentally friendly, and user-friendly products and technologies for the protection, refurbishment, and maintenance of buildings. JUB Group is comprised of 14 subsidiaries and operates in more than 30 markets worldwide. In 2022 JUB joined NIPPON Group, one of the largest manufacturers of paints in the world.

The Challenge

Rapidly changing business conditions, the growth of the group, and the increasing number of stakeholders involved in the planning and reporting process presented significant challenges for JUB Group. It had a 20-year-old business intelligence (BI) solution and an in-house planning tool that was only used for sales; JUB used a vast number of Excel spreadsheets to plan all other processes.

Manual planning processes were long and complicated – more than 170 employees were involved in the business planning and reporting process. They had to create a unified plan across 14 units in a 39-market region, in more than ten business areas including sales, procurement, production, investments, HR, logistics, IT, TQC, maintenance, and marketing. This led to a high rate of errors due to manual transfers of planning data between Excel, the sales app, and SAP.

JUB had no insight into the “real-time” planning process, as it was impossible to keep track of all the corrections and small changes necessary to combine values into an integrated financial plan. Managing large quantities of planning data and distilling it into a single, integrated plan was a struggle.

With more than 30 markets worldwide, the biggest challenge was planning sales at the item level, categorizing the product groups and item codes, merging the data into the purchase and production plan and then, finally, into the financial plan.

It took a full month to complete the sales planning process and another month to complete the financial planning process. Because manual planning processes took so much time, JUB was confined to a single annual planning cycle, limiting its agility and responsiveness to market shifts.

JUB turned to insightsoftware partner Result to find a better planning solution that could streamline planning processes and increase its agility. Result is a leading authority in technology enablement with more than 30 years of experience solving problems for its clients.

The Solution

To meet JUB’s planning challenges, Result first needed to learn what features JUB was looking for in a new solution. The ideal solution would be a modern, web-based solution that provided flexibility on data at all levels: organizational structure, item grouping, financial statements, etc. Next, JUB needed better workflows and collaboration, including flexible data integration and the ability to add custom spread and computation functions at the cell level in input forms.

Based on JUB’s needs, Result delivered a comprehensive Bizview planning system, as well as a data warehouse to make it easy to combine operational data from SAP with planning data from Bizview. In addition, JUB’s 20-year-old BI system was replaced with the modern Qlik Sense analytics platform.

Bizview is an integrated, web-based budgeting, planning and forecasting solution with an Excel-like interface. It allows businesses to shorten planning cycles, collaborate effectively across teams, and increase planning accuracy. Bizview’s flexibility made it an ideal solution for JUB’s needs.

Result customized JUB’s Bizview implementation by developing advanced features based on its specific needs, such as:

• Cell-based computation function
• Enhanced data manipulation functions
• ‘Spread’ feature for sales planning based on historical data
• Advanced workflow and collaboration features

Bizviews standard features, combined with these custom advanced features, greatly simplified and accelerated JUB’s planning processes.

Faster Processes and Better Forecasts

Implementation of Bizview meant the digital transformation of budgeting and reporting at JUB.

Prior to Bizview implementation, JUB completed only one planning cycle each year; now, it is able to complete more planning and forecasting cycles. Planning the business year in one application – instead of in the sales planning application, Excel, and SAP – allows JUB to make twice yearly “bottom-up” forecasts in all areas and have the results automatically rolled up into the overall financial plan.

The new solution has shortened the planning cycle dramatically and made it more collaborative. With Bizview’s advanced workflows, JUB has better control over the process and greater confidence in the security and accuracy of the data, which are now centralized. Users from finance to leadership are automatically informed via email about upcoming deadlines, delays, or necessary action items, leading to a simplified planning process with less work, more accurate data, and fewer problems.

What was once a labor-intensive, highly complex planning process that took more than two months to complete can now be done in just one month, allowing for more frequent forecasting and greater business agility.

Agility and Growth Enablement

With its ability to adapt and scale, Bizview is enabling JUB Group to accelerate its business growth with collaborative and connected planning and forecasting. As JUB expands its business through new acquisitions, Bizview makes it easy to integrate the new business units into its planning and budgeting processes. JUB needs only to enter the new acquisition to SAP and Bizview automatically incorporates its data into JUB’s existing budgeting and planning templates and workflows, saving the company untold hours and resources.

As JUB Group grows and thrives, the company continues to work with Result for product support and upgrades, appreciating Result’s knowledge, experience, timeliness, and reliable quality.

To see how Bizview can help your organization consolidate your planning and reporting, develop accurate and integrated plans, shrink planning cycles, and improve team productivity, schedule a demo today.