Microtest and Russia Conde Nast publishing house automated budgeting using the solution Anaplan

With business development at the management of Condé Nast Russia more and more time and resources on drawing up budgets for all editions began to leave. Process of financial planning and budgeting was solved using spreadsheets of Excel. It caused a number of inconveniences: separation of information, a large number of errors in calculations, the increased labor input on consolidation and making changes in the created plans for each edition.

Choosing a Solution

Microtest suggested to use the solution Anaplan for process automation of planning and the analysis of budget data. Anaplan is a new architecture, the new standard for schedule systems, control and the analysis. Own in - memory - technology of data processing Hyperblock which very simply allows to build and quickly difficult models is the center of a system, to execute any calculations in real time and on any amounts of data.

Project Progress

Within the project the uniform model of financial planning and budgeting consisting of several blocks was configured:

• the general installation options are currency rates, VAT rates, inflation, etc.;
• parameters and algorithms of distribution of the total costs (allocation) by magazines and websites of the Print and Digital directions;
• the block of forms on input and measure calculation of the total costs relating at the same time both to the Print block and to the Digital block. Includes salary, transport, business trips, the phone/the Internet, training, depreciation, lease and the other total costs;
• forms on data entry and budgeting of profits and losses of magazines and the websites of the Print and Digital directions;
• interactive dashborda of data analysis.

Also loading of actual data from the external accounting system was configured.

Result

Tuning of budget model in the Anaplan system was performed Microtest jointly with planning department specialists of Condé Nast Russia. Further changes of model, setup of dashbord and forms are executed already by forces of planning department specialists. Simplicity of setup, rich functionality and own technology of processing of Big Data resheniyaanaplan helped to construct budget model in a system in extremely short time – 3 months that allowed Condé Nast to sushchestvennosekonomit Russia the project budget.

"On project deliverables we had an interconnected budget model according to all editions, – Pavel Svinarev, the chief financial officer of Condé Nast Russia notes. – Now through Anaplan it is possible to analyze with ease data in any kind, to create the plan-fact analysis, to build forecasts, to estimate financial perspectives of all editions, to carry out the scenario analysis "that if …" and to investigate any budget and actual data. All this considerably increases efficiency of obtaining reliable information and minimizes time of acceptance of management decisions".

"We see the huge interest of chief financial officers in a subject of automation of planning and budgeting. Till today the choice was strongly limited to very difficult solutions, long and expensive implementation projects. From a poyavleniyemresheniye of Anaplan it is possible to say safely that the market turned over. In one of the western editions of Anaplan called "the murderer of Excel". And it is very pleasant to us to see its demand all to whom we show possibilities of Anaplan", - Sergey Kiselyov, the director of business development comments on Microtest.