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Transparency. Efficiency. Future Readiness
Gerolsteiner boosts controlling with SAC
More automation, deeper insights, and consistent data: Gerolsteiner is taking a fully SAP-based approach to business planning and performance management. With support from valantic, the mineral water producer replaced Excel-based planning with SAP Analytics Cloud (SAC) and moved contribution margin accounting to SAP BW/4HANA. The scalable controlling environment enables faster, more informed decision-making.
Jan Steffes
Head of Controlling at Gerolsteiner
”Despite the complexity of the project, we successfully delivered on our goals. valantic’s expertise and our close, solution-oriented partnership were instrumental to that success. By working together, we were able to share critical business knowledge across teams, document it systematically, and turn it directly into SAP-enabled processes.“
Project snapshot
Challenge
To future-proof its corporate management, Gerolsteiner wanted to digitally map its manual, Excel-based planning processes onto an analytics platform, and integrate contribution margin accounting—previously generated in a third-party tool—into its existing SAP landscape of SAP S/4HANA and SAP BW, with a higher level of detail.
Consulting approach
After redesigning the planning and control processes based on SAP standards, valantic implemented SAP Analytics Cloud for cost center planning and mapped the contribution margin accounting to SAP BW. In doing so, compatibility with BW/4HANA was ensured for the upcoming migration. Knowledge transfer ensured that Gerolsteiner could manage the controlling platform.
Customer benefits
Gerolsteiner’s Controlling department has an integrated, scalable, future-proof IT architecture with a consistent data foundation. Transparency and faster, partially automated planning processes enable more efficient performance management. Thecontribution margin accounting in SAP BW/4HANA is easier to maintain and enables real-time reporting in SAP Analytics Cloud.
Our client: Gerolsteiner
As Germany’s best-selling mineral water brand, Gerolsteiner stands for variety, quality, and tradition. Founded in 1888 and based in the Vulkaneifel region, the company produces approximately 8.3 million hectoliters of mineral water and non-alcoholic beverages each year. The product range includes various Gerolsteiner-brand mineral waters, Gerolsteiner healing water, and St. Gero healing water.
In addition, Gerolsteiner’s growing soft drink division produces spritzers, lemonades, flavored waters, and cola beverages. The latest innovation is the functional soft drink Gerolsteiner Flow. In addition to quality and innovation, sustainability is an integral part of the company’s strategy. Gerolsteiner Brunnen GmbH & Co. KG employs approximately 850 people.
A truck leaves the Gerolsteiner compact warehouse. (© Gerolsteiner Brunnen)
Integrated platform streamlines business planning at Gerolsteiner
Future-ready corporate management requires high-performance IT. With this in mind, the mineral water producer Gerolsteiner embarked on its analytics project in the controlling department. The company wanted to move away from time-consuming, opaque Excel-based planning processes as well as its outdated standalone tool for contribution margin accounting. The goal was an integrated and scalable solution based on SAP, as Gerolsteiner was already using SAP S/4HANA as its enterprise software and SAP Business Warehouse (SAP BW) for business data management. For the modernization, the company relied on valantic’s SAP consulting and implementation expertise. Together, the team established a future-proof foundation for better business decisions. With SAP Analytics Cloud for planning and contribution margin accounting integrated into SAP, Gerolsteiner now benefits from greater speed, transparency, and consistency in its controlling processes.
Starting point: System silos & lack of transparency hinder performance management
As a company in the food industry, Gerolsteiner operates in a challenging business environment characterized by intense price pressure, complex regulatory requirements, and rising customer expectations. To remain successful, modern digital technologies are essential.
For this long-established mineral water producer, this was a reason to modernize the IT environment in its controlling department.
For planning purposes, integrated platforms for analyzing production, sales, and cost data were intended to facilitate data-driven decisions and enable more efficient business processes as well as more targeted investments.
The previous, largely manual process based on Excel could not meet this requirement. On the one hand, it was time-consuming and error-prone; on the other hand, a lack of integration led to a lack of transparency regarding, for example, the status of planning and consolidation.
Employees at the bottling plant. (© Gerolsteiner Brunnen)
In the area of contribution margin accounting, Gerolsteiner had been using a third-party tool for many years. This tool utilized data sources for production orders, cost center accounting, and the income statement from SAP BW, as well as customer and sales data from the CO-PA profitability analysis module in SAP S/4HANA.
This process was increasingly reaching its limits in day-to-day operations, for example when performing detailed plan-versus-actual comparisons and flexible analyses.
For example, the customer view in the siloed solution was limited to the domestic/export split, and product-line-specific analyses could only be performed to a limited extent due to the restriction to stock-keeping units (SKUs). The software, for which maintenance support was set to end in the foreseeable future, was therefore to be replaced.
Quality control employee. (© Gerolsteiner Brunnen)
The solution in detail: Integration for flexibility & autonomy
Since Gerolsteiner was already successfully using SAP S/4HANA and SAP BW, the company decided, in collaboration with valantic’s analytics team, to map its planning and control processes entirely within SAP using a largely standards-based approach. Following the process redesign, valantic implemented SAC as an innovative, cloud-based self-service solution with content for financial planning. It enables the entire planning process to be accelerated and automated. Cost planning was implemented first, with other sub-plans to follow gradually.
In addition, the team implemented a detailed, multi-level contribution margin and product profitability analysis based on the existing SAP landscape. This required a fundamental understanding of the allocation and distribution logic, as well as aligning the data architecture with Gerolsteiner’s technical requirements.
Mapping the contribution margin accounting was complex, in part due to the integration of new master data attributes and hierarchies. In addition, numerous internal calculation rules had to be transferred from the previous tool, with these rules updated automatically going forward, based on rule-based logic, without manual intervention.
The intensive collaboration between the project partners resulted in a robust, future-proof solution. This enables Gerolsteiner to:
- Independently manage scenarios with different allocation parameters within the controlling function—without extensive support from the IT department
- Present plan-to-actual and actual-to-actual comparisons in monthly reporting
- Create annual reviews for individual-item post-calculations based on averaged monthly values
- Conduct flexible, strategy-oriented medium-term planning with plan and forecast scenarios organized by annual periods
- Flexibly utilize contribution margin accounting: both exclusively within Controlling in a restricted area and in a public reporting section accessible to other departments. As a result, the company has saved two to three business days in its monthly closing process.
A look at the automated warehouse technology (© Gerolsteiner Brunnen)
valantic developed an authorization model for the various user groups and, through an intensive transfer of expertise and extensive training, enabled Gerolsteiner to maintain and administer the solution independently.
Key benefits for Gerolsteiner
Future-ready IT platform powered by an innovative cloud analytics solution
Efficient controlling processes using standard SAP functionality
Greater transparency and higher data quality for business performance management
Faster, more automated planning
Flexible, detailed reporting with ad hoc analyses and standardized monthly reports
In-house administration enabled by knowledge transfer from valantic
Improved maintainability of the IT environment
Judith Jäger
Deputy Project Lead at valantic
”Gerolsteiner’s openness to adapting core SAP S/4HANA processes was key to the project’s success. By aligning the end-to-end process with best practices, we created a future-ready, integrated planning and reporting solution.“
Benefits & outlook: Future-ready, end to end
Efficient and integrated controlling processes based on consistent data, rather than system silos, time-consuming manual workflows, and a lack of transparency: With its analytics project and valantic, Gerolsteiner has positioned itself for the future. Corporate management now takes place in a scalable SAP environment using SAP Analytics Cloud, SAP BW/4HANA, and SAP S/4HANA, and is based on standard best practices. Thanks to valantic, Gerolsteiner also has the technical expertise to manage the controlling solution independently.
With the new platform, Gerolsteiner can carry out cost planning in a workflow-based and partially automated manner: Overall, the planning process has been shortened by one week. Furthermore, the company now has a real-time overview of the current status at all times. Additional sub-plans, such as sales planning, will be implemented in follow-up projects.
In reporting, the company has replaced its previous siloed solution and now benefits from high flexibility, detailed analyses, and a future-proof data architecture. Overall, Gerolsteiner can now make better business decisions more quickly.
Looking to optimize your controlling? Let’s talk!
We’ll show you how to build a future-ready system landscape.
Manuel Essers
SAP Analytics Manager, CoE Lead for SAP Planning & Reporting
valantic
- SAP Analytics Cloud