Schindler Elevator Rises to the Next Level with Anaplan FP&A Models

Prior to selecting Anaplan, Schindler was utilizing legacy forecasting tools and had over 450 disconnected Excel files for their financial reporting.Their key forecast enablers took weeks to turn around, leading to outdated trends and diminished value once end-users completed their edits. These trends also had a very narrow scope.

In addition to these struggles, the slow moving process was not able to produce shorter term insights to adapt with market fluctuations. In other words, the business process, which was created to support a 12-24 month view, was structurally unable to respond to shorter-term, often geographic and/or product specific market disruption.

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After implementation, Anaplan has allowed Schindler the ability for the whole company to plan in a single platform with a holistic view of planning, rather than hundreds of​ separate disconnected files. This has eliminated the risk of Excel errors, link breakages, and data accuracy errors, which has improved the data standards across their 65 district P&Ls. The new UX and user experience has improved collaboration across the company.

Schindler Elevator is able to budget and forecast in a matter of hours compared to months, and have aggregated forecasts in real-time. The model allows for flexible stratification metrics calculated instantly, which gives them a granular understanding of near and long term revenue & margin trends, dramatically improving the insights into budgets.

The Anaplan platform has given Schindler the ability to plan top-down, bottom-plan, forecast, adjust and override by job.

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With the ability to customize processes and migrate all of their spreadsheets under one platform that could be accessed across the company, as well as, expand use cases throughout other departments, Anaplan was the selected technology solution to help transform Schindler’s FP&A processes.

Accelytics implemented Anaplan in two phases, including top-down guidance and bottom-up planning by job, and then expanded Anaplan to other businesses to start Schindler’s connecting planning journey on Anaplan. Workforce planning by job is the next on Schindler’s connected planning roadmap.

Accelytics implemented Revenue & Margin Planning, Payroll Analytics, Cost Center Expense Planning, Workforce Planning and Allocations within Anaplan for Phase 1 of the project. For payroll and HR specific files, confidentiality and security was added. An integration with SAP was also included to share data across the systems.

In Phase 2, Accelytics optimized and improved the current Anaplan model to expand use cases into other business units, upgraded the dashboards to new UX, and enhanced calculations by adding multi-level workflow, scenario planning and hierarchies for improved planning and reporting.

Additionally, each business unit had its own plans and KPIs, processes, and calculation logic added. A CY forecast, budget and 5 year planning horizons completed the Phase 2 project.

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