User Story: Porsche
0 to Forecast in 15 seconds: Porsche GB adopt Infor PM10 for financial reporting & forecasting
The Client
The first Porsche was sold in the UK in 1954, by Archibald Frazer Nash (AFN) from premises at Falcon Works, London Road in Isleworth Middlesex. Two years later AFN became the sole UK concessionaire for Porsche Cars until 1965 when Porsche Cars Great Britain Limited was formed. A move which successfully separated the importing functions from the sales operations.
Porsche Cars Great Britain Limited is the sole UK and Ireland importer of Porsche cars and is wholly owned by Porsche AG in Stuttgart.
The UK and Ireland is the third largest market for Porsche in the world, second only to Germany and the USA. Porsche has been in Reading since 1977, and in its current location at Calcot since 1985.
The Challenge
The initial problem that was presented was to smooth the interface between UK and German reporting. Data is downloaded from Kerridge into both UK and German reporting formats.
Although this delivers reporting in the German format it is very difficult to analyse the German reports and provide detailed information about the numbers. Even more critical to the operation is the link between the UK and German budget and forecast.
The UK Budget is not done at the same level of detail as the Kerridge import, this means that to produce the German format from the UK format is a complete rework of the numbers and is an excessively long process.
The producing of the UK budget and forecast also requires a considerable amount of time and reforecasting is not done as frequently as desired.
The Approach
The objectives of the project were automate the import from Kerridge and populate the Infor PM10 database with the data. It quickly became obvious that the majority of the issues which the client was having were related to the way in which the data was being manipulated.
Kerridge has a 12 digit code with up to 5 segments which change with use through the chart of accounts. The existing reports are a consolidation of individual account codes which have to be formatted differently for UK and Germany. Using a multi-dimensional database enabled the chart to be split into its individual components e.g. dealership, account-type (new /used), model, account.
The import process allocates each account to a model, account, dealership and also handles all of the overhead accounts and balance sheet. As a result of this approach the German reporting was a natural progression from the UK process which was able to be held in the same multidimensional cube structure as purely a separate consolidation.
Being able to do this allowed the process to be quickly extended to automating the forecasting process. Infor PM10 business logic was applied to allow forecasts to be quickly copied and the results automated using pre-defined parameters.
The Result
Because both sets of reports can be produced from the one download the numbers are immediately available in both formats. On top of standard and fixed reports both formats can be analysed by model variant, by dealership.
“Infor PM10 suddenly allows us to produce a new forecast every week rather than every 6 months and we can answer questions on detail which we just tried to ignore in the past”.
Now Porsche can look forward to delivering quality information about their quality cars.
User Stories:
Infor PM10
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"Infor PM10 suddenly allows us to produce a new forecast every week rather than every 6 months and we can answer questions on detail which we just tried to ignore in the past"
Porsche