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High-performance cost management
Adtran optimizes planning with SAC
As a strong partner for comprehensive fiber coverage, Adtran provides network and communications solutions for a wide range of requirements. Rising costs and increased investment in research and development called for effective cost and planning management. Together with valantic, the company set up an efficient platform based on SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) and is now seeing clear benefits.
Key business benefits at a glance
Stephan Eppner
Head of Controlling at Adtran
”Thanks to our SAC project with valantic, we can now carry out cost center planning not only in much greater detail, but, above all, noticeably faster because we can plan at an aggregated level.“
Our customer: Adtran
Adtran is a global provider of network and telecommunications solutions headquartered in the United States, with a strong presence in Europe.
Founded in 1985, the company develops hardware and software for fiber, broadband and enterprise networks. It supports network operators, companies in other industries and data centers in building high-performance, secure and future-ready communications infrastructures.
With a focus on innovation, reliability and open network technologies, the network specialist contributes to digitalization and the provision of fast internet connections worldwide. In Germany, Adtran has offices in Munich, Meiningen and Berlin, among other locations.
The challenge: Better planning performance
The existing planning system had significant limitations. It was outdated, did not perform well enough and, following changes to the IT architecture, was largely fed with Excel files. This created a substantial maintenance burden.
There were also breaks between systems because individual planning components that the legacy system could not handle had been moved to Excel. This made it difficult to adequately support integrated financial, sales and profitability planning. The same applied to flexible top-down management and a consistent workflow.
Planned together with valantic in two phases, the project addresses these shortcomings with a modern, integrated planning platform connected for high performance.
Thomas Heuck
Manager Group Controlling at Adtran
”In my view, the SAC Excel add-in offers the biggest improvement over our old system. It allows us to save significant time when producing management reports and variance analyses. Administering the tool is also much simpler, more intuitive and more efficient.“
The solution: SAP Analytics Cloud as a planning platform
Adtran was already using SAP S/4HANA and had acquired licenses for SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC). It therefore made sense to use SAC for the new professional planning system as well.
Another advantage: The business content in SAP Analytics Cloud is closely aligned with the high-performance SAP S/4HANA engine and covers many core functions. These needed to be extended, but not developed from scratch.
Above all, the company wanted more elegant technical solutions, which valantic implemented. These included dedicated investment and depreciation planning, form-based workforce planning, profit and loss planning, an admin cockpit for centralized administration of the planning process, backup mechanisms for restoring all individual plans and a special HR solution required for data privacy reasons.
Manuel Essers
SAP Analytics Manager at valantic
”Two highly tech-savvy key users at Adtran supported us with the design, implementation and final testing – an unusual level of involvement. Their commitment was a decisive success factor for the project.“
Project progress: From review to successful operation
The project was planned for a total of 245 person-days and covered CAPEX and investment planning, HR planning, OPEX planning, revenue and standard costs, and profit and loss statement planning.
The first phase focused primarily on starting the individual planning processes needed for the profit and loss statement.
The project team included two valantic consultants, four colleagues from Adtran’s controlling department and two highly tech-savvy key users who supported the design, implementation and final testing.
The team began by reviewing the previous solution, documenting improvement requests in the requirements specification and reviewing the SAP Analytics Cloud content “Integrated Financial Planning for S/4HANA.”
The result was a detailed planning architecture for SAP Analytics Cloud that meets Adtran’s requirements and resolves the previous shortcomings. Data management uses pull imports from SAC.
During implementation, the team set up data connections, introduced planning models, interfaces and logic, and implemented a planning workflow with an authorization concept. Feature tests and an integration test followed.
End users, who had previously worked only with Excel, then received intensive training to help them work productively with the new solution.
The project team also successfully completed several forecasting and planning cycles.
Feedback from users has been very positive so far.
With the first project phase successfully completed, the second phase is about to begin. Among other things, it will introduce balance sheet and cash flow planning.
How efficient are your planning processes?
Do these challenges sound familiar? Would you like to optimize your planning? Simply send us a message. Our valantic expert will also be happy to answer any further questions about the project in a personal conversation.
Manuel Essers
SAP Analytics Manager, CoE Lead SAP Planning & Reporting
valantic