prevero case study

Fresenius Medical Care Smarter planning for Quantity, Cost-Center and Sales with prevero – great user acceptance, plus significant efficiency and time gains.

Customer: Deutschland GmbH Size: 100,000+ employees (entire group) Sector/industry: Pharmaceutical products and treatment Products by prevero: prevero Schweinfurt, while St. Wendel produces filters, dyalizers and related equipment. With its dialysis services and machines, Fresenius Medical Care strives Creating a future worth living for patients to enhance the quality of life of people suffering from worldwide, every day kidney diseases. To maintain those high standards, Every 0.7 seconds, Fresenius Medical Care starts there are a lot of behind-the-scenes processes that a dialysis treatment for a patient somewhere in the have to run smoothly and consistently like cogwheels. world. The company treats over 300,000 patients in It is important to always have an overview of the approximately 3,400 clinics and is the world’s leading number of machines, filters, tubes, liquids and valves provider of dialysis machines, dialyzers and related needed by each clinic in each country. Obviously, disposable products. a multitude of different factors must be taken into account. Managing this logistic feat as well as devising Two of its 40 production sites are located in and implementing the corresponding plans can be a : The dialysis machines are manufactured in real challenge.

In business for people. Inconsistent sales and quantity planning able to deal with anything else but sales planning – Theresia Schnell, Head of Business Process sometimes articles were planned even though they Management, Accounting and Controlling EMEA at didn’t exist anymore; sometimes the wrong Excel lists Fresenius Medical Care Deutschland GmbH can tell were sent out, there were several lists with different you a thing or two about the problems of inconsistent revision statuses or the figures had been revised and sales and quantity planning: corrected over and over.”

As this situation was tremendously inefficient for everyone involved and far from creating any added value, there was an urgent need for action. Up to that point, there had been five planning versions each year for each country. For each of those versions, quantity and sales planning alone required one employee’s full attention for a week. “In total, this process took 200 hours a year for each country. For all 30 countries, this amounts to an annual effort of 6,000 hours.” All in all, the process was much too time-consuming and error-prone.

Different views on the same issue Theresia Schnell. As the required effort was much too high compared to the quality of the results, Fresenius devised rather “Up to then, we had been working with two plans: a detailed requirement specifications for a new solution: quantity-based plan devised by the supply chain and another one developed by the sales department, They were looking for a flexible, intuitive and user- based on sales planning according to quantities and friendly tool for quantity, cost center and sales planning prices. Of course, these two plans didn’t necessarily that could handle the present complexity across all correspond to each other. Before the introduction of countries. One of the most important requirements was the new software, the controlling department sent the capability to integrate sales, marketing, controlling out Excel lists to all countries. Each country had to and supply chain in one single system. enter the precise quantities they were planning to sell of particular products in certain months. Afterwards, In addition to providing planning at different levels the completed lists were returned to the controllers, and enabling simulations and “what if” analyses, who tried to consolidate the figures provided by the software was required to process and verify the sales department with the quantities planned country-specific prices and incorporate company- in a logistics-based system.” All of this was carried specific contract types. Another essential aspect out in collaboration with the management, who also was the implementation of a self-service approach, brought in the production division at a later point. The so all employees could enter figures into the system consolidated Excel lists provided the basis for actual by themselves. The goal was to find a tool with a capacity planning. decentralized approach, capable of providing all relevant data in one single tool. Schnell: “It was Urgent need for action crucial for us to find a way to align sales and cost Planning cycles were carried out in the same way center planning or, in other words, to ensure that the in about 30 countries from South Africa to Sweden. quantities planned by the sales department were Schnell recalls: “Needless to say, there were always always consistent with those priced by purchasing a lot of questions and things to be clarified. People and sales – from a stock, production and sales entered all discrepancies and related comments perspective. We wanted a flexible solution that could into the Excel lists. During the peak stages of the help us consider the same issue from different points planning cycles, the controlling department wasn’t of view.”

2 prevero case study Impressed by both tool and team Due to the great flexibility of the forms, they can be Fresenius got in touch with a number of different BI customized for the various people involved in the providers, had lots of meetings, watched several presen- process: members of the sales team, employees tations and finally agreed on a shortlist of three vendors. working in the supply chain and the controlling department. Schnell: “In the planning forms, users can There were some decisive factors for their choice: work with a lot of different filters. As a key accounter, “An aspect we liked about all three tools was their for example, I carry out sales planning according to flexibility. The final decision for our new partner was months and years. The great thing is that I can now mainly based on the software and its architecture, but work with as many dimensions as I like, as prevero is we were also intrigued by the self-service approach and based on an in-memory database and is therefore not the extensive customization options. For us, some of the limited to a certain number of dimensions. In this way, most important functions were a connection to the SAP sales figures can be recorded, planned and evaluated system, manual upload options as well as the possibility according to many different criteria: products, regions, to change stored logics and design queries in a flexible sales channels, industry sectors, cost centers or way.” Apart from the software’s technical capabilities, countries – there are virtually unlimited options.” Fresenius liked how the prevero team approached Fresenius recreated its company-specific structures in the task at hand. According to Schnell, the team prevero and also established interface connections. In immediately knew what really mattered to Fresenius and this way, the documents available for end users could was already able to respond to specific requirements be designed in an optimal way. during the selection process. Between one meeting or workshop and the next, they had already implemented functions that had been discussed and were able to present them in a compelling way.

“This proof of concept was something we perceived as extremely considerate and cooperative. It’s much easier to decide on a product if the provider can give you something to actually see and touch instead of just talking about all the things that could potentially be implemented. Another aspect that is not to be underestimated: We were impressed by prevero’s high level of professional competence, quick thinking Plausibility checks and by the fact that they always remembered When importing data from the SAP system, the everything that had been promised or discussed. This software automatically checks whether there are is why we chose prevero as our new partner.” new products or structures. With prevero, it is now Numerous filters and an unlimited number much easier, than it was with SAP, to identify elements of dimensions that cannot be allocated automatically. Moreover, The new software offers several planning templates the software offers plausibility checks for value and enables all employees to use the same central fields. This means that it can be programmed to alert input forms as a basis for their planning. users if they, for example, make a typing error that results in unusually large discrepancies. They can then check whether the entered figure is correct and decide if they really want to save it like this. The software also provides check reports that can be used by controllers in each country for a final review of their figures after decentralized planning has been completed: Is the margin for a specific product as expected? Have the three new dialysis centers been included in the plan? Have the consumption quantities been adjusted accordingly? Huge time savings long-winded planning process. Now we can use this Schnell: “The implementation is already well underway time in a much better and more useful way.” Are they and we’re making excellent progress. We’re expecting happy with the project progress and working with to save a huge amount of time, as a lot of data no prevero in general? “We are now approaching the longer needs to be collected and distributed with finishing line and are confident that the project will Excel.” As a first step, the planning product is to be be completed successfully. After that, our planning rolled out in 30 countries in the EMEA region. At a process will be significantly more efficient. later point, it might also be extended to Latin America. At the moment, Sweden, Denmark and Serbia are already working with the system and Russia, England, Ireland, Finland, Estonia and several Balkan States will be included soon. By the end of 2017, 15 countries will be connected and 15 more will follow in 2018. After project completion, there will be approximately 1,000 users and 200 Power Users in 30 countries. Benefits

On the home stretch • Genuine partnership with a friendly, professional How do the employees feel about the new solution? and on-the-ball team. According to Schnell, everyone who has already seen • Close participation in solution design by end users. the software is rather impressed and convinced that • A single, shared, agreed, consistent starting the tool will be a real help in the planning process. point for planning. Another bonus point: All colleagues were involved in • Great levels of flexibility and scope for designing the software and were asked to check if all customization for individual needs. contents had been set up in the right way and if the correct dimensions had been defined. Schnell: “We’ve • Easy, flexible import of data from SAP. had nothing but positive feedback. The users are • Automated checking for data mapping particularly impressed by the fact that all information exceptions and value plausibility. relevant for planning is now available in one place. In • Enabling significant time and efficiency savings the past, we spent countless hours struggling with a for more focus on value-adding activities.

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