Ikano Bank
Ikano Bank approached inlumi with the request to automate their budgeting and forecasting process and simplify the usage.
Ikano was originally a part of the home furnishing company IKEA, which was founded by Ingvar Kamprad in 1943. Today the Ikano Group owns and develops competitive and profitable niche companies in the areas of finance, real estate, asset management, insurance and retail.
Headquarters:
Malmö, Sweden
Type of business:
Private
Industry:
Banking
Services provided:
IKANO BANK OPTIMISES ITS BUDGETING AND FORECASTING WITH ORACLE CLOUD
Ikano Bank operates in 8 different countries with a total of 11 companies, making its EPM processes highly complex. The organisation was struggling with a slow and unmanageable budgeting and forecasting process. The workflow was a completely manual process carried out in Excel. If a change was made or if anyone wanted to view data, it took approximately 2-3 days before anything could be presented. As the process was manual, the data was inconsistent and prone to human error.
In 2018, after a recommendation by Oracle, Ikano Bank approached inlumi with the request to automate their budgeting and forecasting process and simplify the usage. Their ambition was to enable faster decision-making and decrease time-to-market with improved data quality, while improving the lives of finance staff.
Solution
Ikano Bank selected Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service (PBCS) by Oracle as their new tool for an improved budgeting and forecasting process.
As all the other companies within the IKEA company structure were using Cognos Controller as their primary EPM software, the default choice was initially to implement Cognos at Ikano Bank as well. Before a final decision was made, all products were reviewed and Ikano Bank decided that Cognos did not have support for the finance model that Ikano Bank required. PBCS therefore felt like a better fit for the needs of the organisation.
Additionally, with an ongoing outsourcing of all IT infrastructure, the organisation required a standalone planning and budgeting platform that supported its needs but did not require any integration with other systems.
Results
With a new refined and simplified process for budgeting and forecasting, Ikano Bank has a shorter time-to-market and improved data quality. If Ikano Bank needs to change something in the workflow, it takes around 4 hours for the automated process to display results, rather than the initial 3 days of manual work for a full-time employee.
The improved process is now capable of handling the complex structure of Ikano Bank’s 11 companies in 8 countries and is now providing the stakeholders with one version of the truth. The simplified process is great to work with, and the team cheers when they run the automated workflow in PBCS, export the data and import it to their ERP system Navision without any errors.
Recommendations from Ikano Bank
Having a full understanding of the system that will be used before you start to draft your new design will help to know what is and is not possible. This will simplify the implementation and will help you to use the software in a more complete and structured way. The need for changes along the way will be minimised and the project will go more smoothly.
If possible, run the project with a short deadline and a clear set of criteria. This will help to stay on track and know that the goal has been reached. If an issue becomes bigger than initially expected, it can be taken out of the project to be handled later. This will avoid delays and keep the team focused.
Work closely with a dedicated team both internally and together with the inlumi consultants. This will give the best results and a simple way to follow up.
It has been a pleasure to work with inlumi, with fast responses and good support from the team. The tight deadlines helped to keep us focused and goal-oriented and Martin’s boxes of Danish chocolate were highly appreciated in the meetings during long working days.
