To support international growth, portfolio diversification, and increasing operational complexity, Granarolo needed to transform how planning, controlling, consolidation, and supply chain processes were managed across the Group. By adopting Board, the Group created a unified planning environment that connects finance, sales, purchasing, logistics, production, and reporting on a shared data model. The platform helps the Group manage large data volumes, standardize processes, reduce manual work, and improve collaboration between headquarters and international business units.
Board has enabled Granarolo to accelerate financial closing from 20 days to ten, reduce daily finance activities by 50%, support weekly sales forecasting and review cycles, and improve supply chain planning by connecting sales forecasts with production and logistics decisions. Looking ahead, Granarolo is exploring how AI and advanced planning capabilities can further strengthen FP&A, scenario modeling, and continuous planning across the value chain.
Board is the control tower for our business. We have one Group and one Board.
Mario Cavallo
Why This Story Matters
Granarolo shows how a complex CPG business can move from fragmented planning and reporting processes to a unified model that connects finance and operations.
By using Board as a shared planning and controlling layer, Granarolo can align strategic, tactical, and operational plans, improve real-time visibility, strengthen forecast accuracy, and make faster, more confident decisions across finance and operations.
Key Learnings
- Unified planning helps global organizations standardize processes without losing local flexibility.
- Connecting financial and operational data improves the speed and quality of decision-making.
- Continuous sales forecasting supports faster responses to price, promotion, and demand changes.
- Scenario modeling helps teams understand the financial impact of operational decisions across supply chain, logistics, and production.
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About Granarolo
Granarolo Group is one of Italy’s leading agricultural and food companies. The Group consists of two complementary organizations: Granlatte, a cooperative of milk producers responsible for collecting raw materials, and a joint-stock company – Granarolo S.p.A. – which processes and markets finished products.
With more than 2,600 employees, Granarolo manages the entire product lifecycle, from raw materials sourcing to production, distribution, and sales. The Group operates 14 production sites in Italy and 8 internationally, including facilities in France, Brazil, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and Germany. Its portfolio includes fresh and UHT milk, yogurt, fresh and aged cheeses, as well as non-dairy products such as pasta, Parma ham, balsamic vinegar, plant-based foods, and baked goods.
Granarolo is the only Italian dairy supply chain based on a fully integrated production model, developed in close collaboration with local producers. Nearly 500 dairy farmers are part of the network, processing around 950,000 tons of product every year and supplying thousands of retail locations daily.
Today, Granarolo generates €1.3 billion in annual revenue and serves more than 40 million consumers. Its international growth, acquisitions, and diversified product portfolio have made planning, controlling, and supply chain coordination increasingly complex.
Over the last 20 years, Granarolo has nearly tripled its revenue through portfolio diversification and international expansion, making a more scalable planning and controlling model essential for the next phase of growth.
The Challenge: Breaking down silos across Planning, Finance, and Operations
As Granarolo continued to expand internationally through acquisitions, portfolio diversification, and the creation of new foreign subsidiaries, the company needed to rethink how planning and controlling processes were managed across the Group. As market conditions, commodity prices, transportation costs, and consumer demand patterns continued to evolve, Granarolo needed plans and forecasts that could adjust more quickly to changing business conditions and support more responsive decision-making.
The objective was to create a unified model connecting strategic, financial, tactical, and operational planning across the organization. Granarolo wanted to establish a Group Controlling Department linked with all business units while eliminating fragmented data management and ensuring compliance with corporate and financial standards.
The company also needed a flexible and scalable platform able to support forecasting, simulations, and scenario analysis in a rapidly changing market environment. The growing complexity of the business required more advanced tools for planning and decision-making, particularly in areas such as sales forecasting and supply chain optimization.
Financial consolidation was another major challenge . Granarolo operates through more than 30 companies, many located outside Italy and using different ERP systems and accounting standards. The Group therefore needed an standardized consolidation process capable of supporting local accounting requirements, IFRS standards, intercompany eliminations, and consolidated reporting.
Granarolo’s supply chain required fast, accurate, and financially connected planning. Milk and dairy products are highly time-sensitive, which makes coordination across sales forecasts, production capacity, logistics routes, raw material availability, and cost control essential.
Purchasing represents more than 50% of Granarolo’s total supply chain costs, making it critical to connect demand forecasts, production requirements, sourcing decisions, and financial outcomes in one planning environment.
The Solution: One unified platform for smarter decision-making
Granarolo selected the Board Enterprise Planning Platform to build a unified planning and controlling environment capable of supporting the Group’s international growth and operational complexity.
Board was chosen for its ability to process large volumes of data quickly, integrate with existing systems including SAP ERP, and provide the flexibility needed to support different business units, subsidiaries, and planning requirements across the Group.
Using Board, Granarolo developed a planning framework that connects strategic, financial, tactical, and operational processes within one environment and one shared data model. The platform supports sales planning, logistics, purchasing, accounting, consolidation, reporting, forecasting, annual budgeting, and multi-year business planning.
Board enables advanced simulation and scenario modeling, allowing Granarolo to evaluate internal and external signals such as raw material prices, packaging costs, transportation expenses, energy prices, and market changes to understand potential business impacts before decisions are made. On the operational side, the company integrated sales forecasting with logistics and supply chain management. Starting from sales volumes collected in Board, Granarolo can calculate transportation requirements, optimize logistics routes, manage variable costs, and automate intercompany eliminations.
Granarolo established a weekly closed-loop forecasting process that supports continuous planning. Sales teams can review performance, adjust plans, evaluate promotions, and respond quickly to changing market conditions, helping plans and forecasts adjust in line with the latest business reality. The purchasing process was also redesigned to connect sales forecasts directly with production capacity across plants. This enables the company to allocate production volumes more efficiently, reduce internal transfers, and improve manufacturing cost control.
Mario Cavallo
Thanks to Board, we now have a weekly closed-loop process covering sales target setting, review, and adjustments, supported by the sales forecast. In this way we can react quickly to competition regarding Prices and Promotions and provide meaningful data-driven information to optimize our supply chain process.
For financial consolidation, Granarolo implemented the Board Financial Consolidation and Reporting (FCR) application as a unified platform for reporting, analysis, and consolidation activities. The solution supports the entire process, from importing accounting data from SAP to intercompany eliminations, manual adjustments, and consolidated reporting.
The Benefits: Faster processes, better visibilty, and greater business agility
Board has helped Granarolo to support international growth while improving efficiency, accuracy, and decision-making across the organization.
By creating a shared planning and controlling environment based on a “Single Version of the Truth.” This global framework today connects headquarters with international subsidiaries and aligns strategic objectives with local planning activities.
Aleja Fava
With Board, we can work together using shared data, simpler processes, and more value-driven decision-making.
Today, more than 100 sales users can simultaneously work across six different top-down and bottom-up planning processes, managing 11,000 products and 30,000 commercial customers without relying on manually updated spreadsheets.
The weekly sales forecasting process creates seamless continuity between the three-year strategic plan and the annual budget, helping Granarolo improve forecast accuracy and align operational decisions with evolving demand signals.
Board also helped standardize processes while maintaining the flexibility needed by different business units. This improved consistency, transparency, and collaboration across the organization.
With Board as a flexible and powerful platform, we could develop the flexible model we had in mind to support our global expansion and diversification.
Mario Cavallo
In finance, Board has accelerated pre-closing and closing processes by automating workflows and reducing manual activities. Thanks to the integration of financial and non-financial data within a single environment, Granarolo can make consolidated financial reports available within the first ten days of the following month, compared with 20 days previously.
Automation has also significantly reduced operational workloads: the finance team now spends 50% less time on daily activities, while the Group has fewer data points to manage – more or less 50% down.
Thanks to Board, the finance team spends 50% less time on daily activities and the Group has one trusted version of the truth.
Mario Cavallo
These improvements are particularly significant considering the scale of Granarolo’s operations, which include more than 300 million rows of accounting data, 40 million rows of sales data, and approximately 1 million invoicing entries per year. Board’s powerful processing capabilities and seamless integration with the company’s data platform enable Granarolo to manage these massive volumes of data while maintaining high performance and reliability.
We chose Board because it proved to be an excellent solution for processing large volumes of data in a short time, with high flexibility and integration with the systems we use, including SAP ERP.
Mario Cavallo
Board has also delivered substantial benefits across logistics and production planning. By automating logistics cost calculations and intercompany transactions, Granarolo improved transportation efficiency and optimized distribution processes.
The integration between sales and production planning has reduced the production-to-sales cycle by two weeks, minimized intercompany product transfers, and improved control over production capacity and product availability.
Finally, Board’s simulation and scenario analysis capabilities allow Granarolo to assess the financial and operational impact of changes in raw material costs, packaging, energy prices, and other market variables, enabling faster and more informed decision-making.
Conclusion: Advancing toward fully Unified Planning
For Granarolo, planning and controlling transformation is an ongoing journey.
By connecting strategic, financial, and operational planning on a shared platform, Granarolo has established the foundation for continuous planning across the organization. Board helps the Group improve real-time visibility, strengthen forecast accuracy, and make faster, more confident decisions across finance, sales, and supply chain.
As Granarolo continues to advance its FP&A capabilities and explore AI-driven planning opportunities, Board supports a more intelligent, scalable, and always-on planning model. This helps plans and forecasts stay aligned with the latest business reality and gives teams the ability to respond faster to changing internal and external signals across the value chain.
Aleja Fava
Thanks to Board, we now benefit from greater consistency, transparency, and a truly integrated view of the business.
