Gigaset sought to replace its inherited complex, SAP dominated planning and reporting landscape with a more flexible, streamlined approach to planning and analysis. The business chose the Board Intelligent Planning platform to provide greater flexibility and visibility across finance, sales, logistics, material and product management, transport, and production activities. Today, Gigaset is also able to quickly align production with supply chain bottlenecks in the event of restrictions in material availability, for example, of microchips.
Finally we have a controlling and planning system that business users look after and enhance independently, quickly, and flexibly without having to bother our colleagues in IT. Displays and calculations that were previously unable to be realized with the SAP tools are now standard for us today with Board.
Verena Ueffing
Gigaset AG, Munich, is a market-leading international communications technology company. Gigaset has been in production in its home country, Germany, since 1941. The cordless phones are manufactured locally in Bocholt in Germany’s Lower Rhine region, yet are in demand all over the world. Gigaset is the only company to manufacture such communication products in Germany. The products, which are proudly “Made in Germany”, are standing consciously for quality and a long service life.
The Challenge: Inflexible, complex legacy BI and Planning tools
When Gigaset was still part of Siemens AG, the IT landscape was geared to the needs of a large corporation with relatively high operating costs. This also included the use of SAP BW, SAP BI IP, and SAP APO DP in the area of BI & CPM. This system landscape was very laborious, and each modification had to be undertaken by external service providers. As Gigaset carved itself out of the group, a new course of action arose, and an ambitious cost-saving program was set up. Planning was based on SAP BI IP and SAP APO, and reporting was based on SAP BW, all of which had continuously grown in complexity and scope over the years. The aim was to remove these systems as BI tools in just over five months from the new project’s start date. In addition, users required considerably faster performance from a new system.
The main objective of the project was that BI must become lower-cost and more efficient, and as a whole be sustainable and upgradable according to Gigaset’s changing requirements.
Over time, many requirements were added. The individual strategic and operational areas were to be interlinked in order to achieve the greatest possible transparency about the situation in the company, and to be able to react quickly to special situations.
The Solution: Smarter Planning in one, user-friendly environment
The initial goal was to use a higher-performance and more user-friendly tool to completely replace the existing SAP APO DP/SAP BI IP solution that Gigaset had been using for sales, turnover, and margin planning. As a second project step, the SAP BW solution, which had been used for reporting, was also to be replaced.
The fragmented processes related to volume planning, rolling value forecasting, and annual budget planning were to be merged within a single tool, simplified, and harmonized. Board, the Enterprise Planning Platform that offers smarter planning, actionable insights, and better outcomes, was selected for the task.
The long-term goal was to use Board for each of the following activities:
Financial/Demand Planning
- Sales planning including revenue forecasts
- Budgeting
- Reporting/Controlling forecasts
- Administration (lifecycle management, planning monitoring)
- Pricing, manufacturing costs, turnover, and margin planning
- Quality management
- Project controlling
- Cost center/cost element planning and IS deviations
- Market segment analysis
Sales/Logistics Reporting
- Logistics and sales controlling
Variant Planning
- Lifecycle and pre-series planning for products
Material Management
- Material stock controlling
- Purchasing and consumption reports
Product Management
- Product controlling
- Market analysis
Transport Management
- Controlling of internal on-site transport
- Controlling of external services
PLM Controlling
- Controlling of development projects
- Break-Even Analysis
Production
- Production controlling
- KPI Reporting
Financial Reporting
- Financial KPI monitoring and reporting
- KPI Reporting
- Headcount reporting
Dirk Lörwink, Head of IT Business Applications at Gigaset, explains: “Over the years, we’ve been able to easily extend and further adopt the tool for sales, quality, logistics, procurement, and production management, all integrated with finance. We started with basic functionality, and quickly found we could extend the process, including factors such as rebates, bonus programs or discounts. The basis was a robust data model and strong performance of the platform. This meant we could always prepare the data as we needed it.“
Sales and Supply Chain Planning
Today, each of Gigaset’s subsidiaries uses Board for monthly sales planning. Planning is done for twelve months on a rolling basis and, in addition to the rolling order forecasts (ROF), special activities or the market launch of new products are also taken into account.
The outcomes of the ROF planning are consolidated and checked centrally in Germany by the Supply Chain department. This allows errors to be detected and corrected early before the plan is created. This forms the basis for the turnover forecast. Supply Chain also takes this data and uses it as the basis for creating a strategic plan in Board. This data is used as the foundation for the entire supply chain management (SCM) process, from procurement to production control. To enable this, the data is written back into the operating source system (SAP).
In a further step, the SCM can distribute the monthly requirements across the corresponding weeks, according to customer behavior, and transfer this to SAP. The outcomes are used in both the monthly financial forecast and annual budget planning. In addition to the planned quantities, the corresponding prices and manufacturing costs for products are either downloaded anew from the SAP system to Board or, if they are not yet available, defined in Board and later transferred back to SAP.
Reporting
The reporting area within Board, produced by Board’s long-standing implementation partner Qurius, contains globally standardized as well as customizable reports for Sales and Logistics which display the status quo compared to the plan and/or forecast in seconds. With ad hoc analyses, users can identify deviations and changes at any time. In this way, suitable measures can be deduced in a very short period of time and implemented where required.
Product Lifecycle Management
Another Board application has been created for variant planning and product life cycle management. It is used for the planning of milestones in product development and among other things displays the pre-production capacity utilization in production. As various departments are involved in the lifecycle of a product, each step must be accurately planned. This application makes it possible to view when data from the various areas needs to be processed or when the devices are available to be marketed.
From the very beginning, Gigaset set the course for a high level of user acceptance thanks to strict project management and the intensive involvement of future users via opinion polls, special training sessions, and even the formation of a Business Intelligence Competency Centre (BICC).
The Benefits: Greater visibility and flexibility, process standardization, and a significant reduction in IT costs
Through the Board platform, Gigaset gains actionable and crucial insights that are used in the strategical and operational business as the planning data is written back into the source systems as concrete production and purchasing specifications.
Streamlined, automated processes
Overall, the system has adjusted perfectly to suit the newly designed company structure and the new challenges. With the carve-out of Gigaset from the Siemens group, many aspects have been simplified and streamlined, which is also reflected in the leaner processes that have been mapped with the aid of Board. There are now fewer individual work steps, many of which have been automated and are now more closely interwoven with the entire supply chain. All of the activities are performed within Board, and there are no more disruptions as was previously the case.
One example of the simplification and consistent working approach achieved through working with a single platform is that previously Gigaset was able to define actual and planned values but updating the values during the year (calculation of planned vs. actual) was only possible in Excel with the aid of complicated V-Lookups and linkages. In Board, these values are automatically calculated and are available at any time.
Dirk Lörwink calls the solution’s flexibility invaluable: “Once we had the foundation of knowledge, we were able to develop additional applications for ourselves”. The majority of users are using reporting facilities, but more and more usage is for planning. The impact is the visibility it brings: the power of reporting and simple data entry means that Board became very popular here! Many users started with the reporting features and then began to discover and use the planning features We use the tool in many applications. It has become our single version of the truth.”
The particular benefit of integrated business planning with the close involvement of the supply chain became apparent when supply chains were significantly disrupted by various crises such as Covid or the Ukraine war.
“As it was for so many electronics manufacturers, Covid significantly impacted materials availability at Gigaset, notably in microchip availability. Because we had a robust planning process in Board, this enabled Gigaset to flex in new ways and build new processes they had not previously seen as necessary, thereby enabling a futureproofed approach. The planning team was able to create an allocation program, loading in a bill of materials, and analyzing material availability at each production location. We could then turn the view 180 degrees from sales to materials, getting a report on how much we could produce. We could then match production to supply constraints”, explains Dirk Lörwink.
Over the years, we have been able to easily expand and further customize the Board platform for sales, quality, logistics, procurement and production management – all integrated with finance. We started with basic functionalities and quickly realized that we could expand the process by including factors such as rebates, bonus programs, or cash discounts.
Dirk Lörwink
At the same time, Dirk Lörwink emphasizes the improved collaboration by creating a doorway from sales through to manufacture.
“Before it was siloed working. Now we see the benefit of collaborating by using Board. I can quickly switch my view from sales forecast to material availability. This has changed the way employees think about their numbers. The sense of responsibility has improved since everyone knows what influence their own numbers have on the other areas. Everyone is thinking about how different processes can be adjusted and synchronized. In the end, we can make better decisions.“
Reporting also shows how Board simplifies work and processes. “Board offers us the advantage of being able to display data from various sources in one report. Now we are using Board, we can finally show all of the figures from all our global offices in one report, and at the same time we obtain a transparent view of the overall development”, explains Verena Ueffing, the Board project manager at Gigaset.
Each department is able to operate more independently and flexibly as they can undertake enhancements and adjustments to reports and applications themselves, without the need for support from IT or any external consultants. Combined with significantly lower maintenance costs overall, this has ultimately led to enormous savings. IT costs in the areas of reporting and planning alone have been reduced by more than 90% with the discontinuation of SAP-BW, SAP-APO DP, and SAP BI IP. As a result, even without taking into account the considerable business advantages, the entire project paid for itself after less than one year.
