GEA: Putting financial planning on the fast track with SAP Analytics Cloud for planning
Explore GEA’s journey with SAP
GEA’s quarterly financial planning and forecasts are a critical part of its business. These processes drive accountability and accuracy for key insights and decision-making across the company. But disparate tools and manual steps weren’t adding up to an efficient process each quarter, so the company brought reporting up to speed with the planning capabilities in the SAP Analytics Cloud solution.
| Industry | Region | Company Size | Partner |
| Industrial manufacturing | Düsseldorf, Germany | 18,200 employees | cbs Corporate Business Solutions |
reduction in the need for technical support.
financial reporting and planning.
Head of Corporate Financial Planning, GEA Group
Updating financial reports to be faster and more meaningful
GEA Group is one of the world’s largest systems suppliers for the food and beverage and pharmaceutical industries. Named one of Europe’s top employers for 2024, the company is focused on innovation and sustainability, bringing to life its purpose: “Engineering for a better world.”
The company conducts midterm budget planning and financial forecasts each quarter for more than 200 entities. These comprehensive reports include sales, order intakes, costs, profits, and key balance sheet components, providing a divisional and global picture of financial health and future business expectations.
However, getting to these bottom-line numbers was a time-consuming and manual process for its divisional financial leads. The company had an existing tool connected to several products, including the SAP Strategic Enterprise Management application, but it took three to four steps to generate these reports. Tasks included filling out a spreadsheet template, entering the form data into the system, performing calculations in the existing tool, and generating a report to distribute to stakeholders.
There wasn’t a smooth, integrated process for the financial teams to run these forecasts each quarter – it was the right time for GEA to overhaul its financial planning and forecast technology.
Empowering financial stakeholders with integrated SAP tools
GEA decided to move its analytics environment to the cloud. The company previously used SAP BusinessObjects solutions and SAP Lumira software. To support business continuity and make the most of tight integrations already implemented with SAP S/4HANA, the company turned to the SAP Analytics Cloud solution as its financial reporting and planning solution. It paired SAP Analytics Cloud for planning with SAP Strategic Enterprise Management. The company selected cbs Corporate Business Solutions as its implementation partner.
Each organization at GEA would have access to its consolidated financial data from a single sign-on web-based application. Financial teams could now use a user-friendly cloud-based solution, making the financial planning and reporting process much more convenient for users. SAP Analytics Cloud for planning streamlined the process throughout, providing business intelligence, augmented analytics, and predictive analytics along with enterprise planning capabilities.
Now, instead of starting with an empty template and fact-finding mission, financial leads can access functionalities to reference key data directly in the tool. One of the most valuable features is the ability to pre-plan budget forecasts using the last quarter’s or year’s numbers. For instance, it can take values from the prior report, add a value on top with just a few clicks to prepopulate in the system, and adjust the number as needed.
With this more-efficient tool, GEA is now forecasting not only quarterly values, but also monthly values, which improves overall forecast quality.
Business Application Consultant, GEA Group
Adding up the forecast advantages with SAP Analytics Cloud for planning
With SAP Analytics Cloud for planning as its planning and reporting technology foundation, GEA divisional finance leads are gaining new levels of efficiency when they prepare, analyze, and distribute financial forecasts and reports.
The cloud-based solution has eliminated the manual work and disparate tools that required extensive time and effort with the previous on-premise solution. Instead, there is a singular intuitive graphical interface. These users save time and reduce errors with automated calculations and prepopulation distributions, among the many other capabilities teams are exploring.
There’s also now a much shorter technical planning ramp across its 700 PCs with different operating systems, delivering a more efficient allocation of resources and higher comfort level for division planners. Before SAP Analytics Cloud for planning, when an existing tool needed an upgrade or maintenance or when a Microsoft Excel version was installed, it could take up to a half-year to roll out a new service or update. All that’s been eliminated.
Investing in a financial foundation for the future
GEA continues to integrate features of SAP Analytics Cloud for planning and customize for its financial planning, forecast, and report-growing requirements. Ultimately, the plan is to harmonize its data structures, potentially through the SAP Datasphere solution.
Featured partner
cbs Corporate Business Solutions offers global consulting services to market leaders in industrial manufacturing, life sciences, chemicals, and automotive. As process consultants and SAP specialists, cbs delivers business and digital transformation services across Europe, Asia-Pacific and Japan, and North America regions.