LKAB, a leading mining and minerals group, needed a more reliable and flexible way to manage financial planning. The organisation’s previous custom-built budgeting system was unstable, required nightly updates that disrupted operations across time zones, and lacked agility because even minor adjustments demanded external expertise.
By introducing Workday Adaptive Planning, the organisation has transformed the way it manages budgeting and scenario planning throughout all subsidiaries.
“Today, the solution delivers real-time insights, improves collaboration, and enables smarter, faster decisions that align financial planning with long-term strategy,” shared Linda Hannu-Sturk, Group Controller at LKAB.
Moving beyond a legacy system
The old budgeting tool struggled to support the scale and the complexity of LKAB’s different operations across the group. Updates often failed overnight, leaving teams waiting for corrections, and reliance on side calculations in Excel created inconsistencies and duplication of effort.
With processes fragmented across different business areas, LKAB needed a planning solution that could unify data, strengthen accuracy and provide the flexibility to adapt to rapidly changing market conditions.
When prices change, the entire budget and KPIs update automatically in Workday. It’s an important efficiency gain for LKAB.
Group Controller
Rolling out transformation step by step
LKAB Business Area Special Products consists of three divisions and 16 legal entities around the world. Workday Adaptive Planning was introduced gradually, division by division, over the course of three years. This phased approach gave each business area time to adapt and ensured that lessons learned in earlier rollouts could be applied to later ones. By 2024, the final division was integrated, and Workday Adaptive Planning became the standard budgeting and forecasting tool enterprise-wide within Business Area Special Products.
The platform is now maintained by a dedicated core team, which continues to refine processes and introduce improvements.
During 2024 Business Area Iron Ore also started a project to replace the old budgeting tool and Workday Adaptive Planning has been rolled out and used for budget work 2025.
Greater efficiency and flexibility
With Workday Adaptive Planning in place, LKAB has eliminated the delays and instability of its legacy system. Updates are immediate, providing real-time insights that allow teams to analyse data and adjust plans on the spot.
Dashboards make it easier for users to input figures and instantly see the impact on margins and volumes, while assumptions around costs, prices and production volumes are now centralised in a single solution rather than scattered across spreadsheets.
The ability to plan and budget capital expenditures (CapEx) and run scenarios has also become a critical advantage. Teams can now model different business conditions, anticipate outcomes and adapt quickly as market circumstances evolve. The result is a financial planning process that is more transparent, consistent and effective in supporting informed decision-making across the organisation.
With Workday Adaptive Planning, I can easily copy budget, remodel it, remove certain elements and add others. This allows us to track assumptions, analyse variance and identify process improvement for better financial follow-up.
Group Controller
Strengthening financial strategy
With the foundation in place, LKAB has fully embedded Workday Adaptive Planning into its financial processes, moving beyond a legacy system that once held back growth. The solution now delivers efficiency and adaptability, enabling the organisation to align budgets with long-term strategic plans, respond more rapidly to market fluctuations, and prepare for increasing regulatory demands by incorporating sustainability data into planning.
Looking ahead, LKAB is exploring the role of AI and automation to provide deeper insights and enhance financial analysis. What began as a budgeting transformation is now evolving into a future-focused approach where financial planning drives strategy and supports sustainable decision-making across the company.
Workday Adaptive Planning has shifted our focus from managing spreadsheets to driving strategy. We now have the agility to plan for today while preparing for the future.
Group Controller