Green innovation company achieves a more sustainable way to plan.

Since 1866, Hedeselskabet, a Danish green innovation and development company, has worked to protect natural resources while ensuring long-term development that reflects these principles. The growth and success of the company has resulted in significant reinvestment in green innovation, but this growth initially posed challenges for the finance team. The FP&A team became responsible for monthly and yearly consolidation for more than 30 business lines across 15 countries. In the past, this was done manually using spreadsheets and data from 10 ERPs.

The implementation of Workday Adaptive Planning together with one ERP and a business intelligence tool has streamlined this once complicated process and given Hedeselskabet a single source of truth for finance data. By automating activities, such as currency conversion, and allowing finance to slice and dice data for different internal and external reporting requirements in one system, Hedeselskabet now has a more flexible and scalable solution that makes it easy to manage and gain insight into additional lines of business as they are added. Workday Adaptive Planning has reduced the time spent on consolidation, with month-end close now completed three days faster and year-end close reduced by more than a week.

Business and financial managers across business lines now contribute budget and forecast information directly into Workday Adaptive Planning and have started tracking additional KPIs, such as product units and consulting hours sold. What’s more, the flexibility of the system means that everyone can generate the forecasts and reports they need—when they need them—and use the data to plan more strategically. And with higher-quality data, it is easier for the finance team to quickly create additional scenarios.

Challenges.

• Managing complexity. Planning and consolidation was made difficult by Hedeselskabet’s complex business structure, which included 30 business lines across 35 companies in 15 countries.

• Huge volumes of reporting. Reporting was overly time-consuming, with different requirements for internal and external reporting at a group, company, and country level.

• Disparate systems and data. Finance data had to be pulled and consolidated from 10 ERPs, involving time-consuming, inaccurate manual processes.

Results.

• Streamlined planning and consolidation. Workday Adaptive Planning has automated processes, such as currency conversion, to reduce the time and risk involved in planning and financial consolidation.

• Simplified reporting. Reporting is faster, easier, and more efficient with finance able to quickly slice and dice data for different internal and external reporting requirements, giving finance more time to produce ad hoc reports.

• Single source of truth. Consolidating ERPs down to one and integrating it with Workday Adaptive Planning via a business intelligence tool has reduced manual handling of data and provides the business with a single source of truth.