UNIPREST INSTAL CASE STUDY
How Uniprest Instal manages budgeting and reporting processes with the CPM solution
Implementation of the CPM – Corporate Performance Management – solution within UNIPREST INSTAL
About Uniprest Instal:
Industry: sanitary and heating installations / HVAC products
Business activity: distribution of products and materials for installations, the company being part of the Rensa Group from the Netherlands
Employees: over 200
Partners: 120 suppliers
Portfolio: 300,000 products
Turnover: approx. EUR 47 million / 2021
Market presence: 10 locations covering all counties in Romania
Project overview:
Division: CPM
Implemented solution: CPM / EPM performance management system
Company: Uniprest Instal
Replaced solution: Excel
Project objective: Automation of the following processes: planning & budgeting, simulation & forecasting, reporting & analysis, data visualization
Before implementing the CPM solution
Challenges faced by the company
- Difficulties in making strategic decisions and in quickly establishing the right courses of action
- Lack of software tools capable of providing a clear, overall view of the business
- Non-automated processes for tracking and analyzing performance indicators
- Difficulty in preparing and monitoring the revenue and expense budget
- The large amount of time and the high number of human resources dedicated to planning, budgeting, analysis, and reporting processes
- Lack of real-time access to detailed and accurate information
- Difficulties in tracking the supplier situation and the relationship with customers
- Increased effort required to maintain data accuracy and monitor the financial situation
After implementing the CPM software solution
The objective pursued by the company
- Efficient performance management within the company
- Replacing Excel files and automating budgeting, reporting, and related processes
- Forecasting data in a unified, intuitive environment that provides a clear view of the business
- Simplifying planning, budgeting, analysis, and reporting operations
- Reducing the time dedicated to organizing and processing financial data
- Ensuring a high level of data accuracy
- Control and visibility over costs and revenues, budgeting processes, and the company’s overall financial situation
- Situation before implementing the CPM software
- Situation after implementation and use of the CPM software
Before implementing the CPM solution, the revenue budget was calculated in Excel by the Uniprest team. As a result, creating it was a process that required a great deal of time, while also involving a large number of human resources and frequent internal meetings for validation by branch managers. In addition, the expense budget was built by consolidating Excel files at branch level, and the verification process consumed too much time. Another lengthy process was the allocation of administrative expenses at branch level.
After initialization, each branch manager had to work on the cost budget using an Excel file model, and after editing the budget, a file was saved for each version, validated following the reviews carried out within the budgeting workflow.
In addition, budget data aggregation required a great deal of time at branch level for Uniprest, while consolidating the data into the Profit & Loss report for external reporting was difficult. The Balance Sheet report was prepared by employees in the financial department by exporting data from the ERP software system, followed by processing it in Excel.
Analyses aimed at performance indicators were carried out in Excel through ad hoc processing for each sales representative individually. As a result, the high time consumption, together with the need for increased attention in verifying amounts and performing validations, represented monthly concerns for the Uniprest team.
Before implementing CPM, the budget was prepared in Excel and it worked, but this way of working required too much time and a very large volume of work. We produced a number of financial reports less frequently, about once a year, and it involved a lot of work. For the same reasons, we could not prepare quarterly budgets and we did not track the budget for each profit center on a quarterly basis.
Attila Fazakas, Managing Director - Uniprest Instal
After implementing the CPM solution, the Uniprest team optimized its budgeting, analysis, and reporting processes. Revenue, operating expense, and personnel budgets start from an existing situation already available in the database of the performance management system. The budget is managed separately for each branch, while data aggregation is performed natively. Budgets can be prepared in a shorter time, and budget versions are very easy to manage and track.
At the same time, a workflow was implemented for budgeting administrative expenses allocated to branches, with the help of which Uniprest representatives can track profitability at branch level. Following the implementation of the CPM system, a series of reports were developed, such as purchasing analysis reports, including gross margin tracking, and sales reports by product groups and subgroups, by customer, and more. In addition, with the CPM solution, the company can track cost variances between actual and budgeted figures for each type of cost and for each branch individually.
The Profit & Loss report is pre-calculated and can be easily tracked without any additional processing. By using the CPM solution, report consolidation is performed instantly at company level and for each individual branch. Following implementation, the Balance Sheet report was created, which represents a very useful tool, primarily for the finance area.
Within the system, the company generates interactive dashboards including performance indicators – KPIs, and through the implementation of the broadcasting system, this information can be sent periodically, automatically, to sales representatives and regional sales managers (the data can also be sent to external users). In addition, through the web interface provided by the CPM system, the Uniprest team has remote access to functionalities within the application, thus ensuring the flexibility required in work-from-home / remote activity scenarios.
With CPM, we work in a much more professional way and it is much easier to monitor the budget. Through the reports in CPM, we can see our situation in much greater detail, up to date. We monitor inventory reports, the situation by locations and profit centers, relationships with suppliers and customers, we can discover new opportunities and develop our relationships with them. Basically, now, by quickly processing accurate data, we can see the detailed situation in real time, not one year later.
Attila Fazakas, Managing Director - Uniprest Instal
In CPM, we have all kinds of reports that allow us to monitor our situation in detail and in real time, whether we are talking about our financial position, our relationship with suppliers, or our relationship with customers. We can closely track collections by branch and by customer — a very important indicator, as it shows us how efficient it is to work with a particular customer and what their financial behavior is compared to another customer.
With the help of the CPM solution and the reports available through this system, we can monitor throughout the year those KPIs that are relevant to supplier relationships. Based on the analyses carried out with the CPM solution, we can assess the situation with suppliers and gain a forward-looking view of those relationships. The results of these analyses support our negotiations and, very often, represent important arguments in those discussions.
The most important changes and benefits recorded after implementing the solution
Among the most important changes and benefits recorded by the Uniprest team following the use of the CPM – Corporate Performance Management – solution are:
- Fast retrieval of information from the resource management system and connection of data flows, thanks to the integration of the CPM solution with the ERP system
- Organization and automation of the budgeting process and easy creation of revenue and expense budgets
- Easy preparation and monitoring of financial reports, with relevant figures, such as Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, and more
- Elimination of human errors and preservation of data accuracy
- Greater control over expenses for each branch, sales representative, and for the entire company
- Simple and fast visualization of performance indicators and the ability to carry out detailed analyses in a short time
- Reduction of working time across multiple operations and allocation of fewer human resources to budgeting, analysis, and reporting processes
- Fast analyses of variations in commercial margins by product and product group
- Easy identification of the ratio between performing and non-performing stock for each location and the possibility to define action directions in this regard in a shorter time
- Tracking the impact of supplier price increases on business plans and the company’s turnover
- Analysis and evaluation of relationships with suppliers / customers
- Quick generation of detailed reports with essential information that allows the timely shaping of long-term strategies, aimed at retaining customers and maintaining profitability
- Timely delivery of managerial reports and improvement of the decision-making process and business strategies
The speed with which we can view KPIs and the analyses we are able to perform are the greatest benefits obtained following the implementation of the CPM solution. The time dedicated to budgeting and reporting processes has been reduced by half since we started using Senior Software’s system.Also, with the CPM solution, we can track various inventory reports, which allow us to understand the ratio between non-performing stock and good stock, a situation that we can monitor for each location where we also hold merchandise inventory. We can ensure efficient movement of non-performing stock between the headquarters and branch locations, as well as between the branch locations themselves, so that it can be sold more effectively.Therefore, based on this information, we can adjust quantities in future requests to suppliers or develop a series of strategies aimed at reducing non-performing stock.
Tracking the impact of price increases on the company’s profitability
The CPM solution allows Uniprest’s management to monitor how profitability is affected by supplier price increases and to what extent the business plan is being achieved.
With the help of this CPM report, managers have the possibility to track the situation for each location as well as at the level of the entire organization, thus giving the company a clear view of sales figures, the price increases that need to be applied, and the actual business profitability. Such information is useful in designing appropriate strategies aimed at retaining customers and maintaining a healthy balance between costs and revenues.
During this period of price increases, we can monitor through a report to what extent a business plan is being achieved under the influence of increases in the prices of the products we receive from our suppliers, so we can see exactly what impact price increases have on our turnover. Therefore, we can gain a clear picture of the relationship between costs and revenues, information that we can use to shape a long-term strategy resulting in a favorable balance between cost and revenue, so that we can retain our customers while also preserving profitability.
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