smartPM Knowledge Platform

“As an international bank with more than 3.000 employees in seven countries, our requirements towards a CPM tool are extreme: we want to report, consolidate, forecast, analyse and simulate across several countries, reporting standards, languages and currencies using one technology. So we looked for one tool to cover these requirements and answer my ad-hoc questions in a user-friendly, flexible and fast way. smartPM.solutions’ team implemented the software in a very agile, effective and efficient way. Today we use the software as intended and benefit in more ways from the solution than I expected: smartPM.solutions’ team turned out to be the perfect partner for us – and the solution is a landmark in a Finance Transformation.“

“As a company with more than 7.500 employees, selling into 125 countries, we were looking for a highly flexible CPM system and an implementation partner who truly understands our business. We started with the project and we were highly satisfied with every aspect of the collaboration. Now we are happy to have both perfect support from the software vendor as well as from smartPM.solutions. Their Consultants take the ‘extra-mile’. We are happy to leverage their know how as ‘sparring partners’ for all strategic and hands-on questions related to Budgeting, Forecasting and Reporting.”

The high flexibility of the software and its intuitive handling convinced all along the line. Data reliability and consistency, and thus the foundation for proper business processes give us an enormous trust for fast and consistent decision making in several planning scenarios. Overall, we profit from completely new insights in our data, explaining better than ever our business units’ status as well as their respective development … This cannot be compared to the extremely transparent procedures in future. Particularly the high expert-skill level of the whole smartPM.solutions Team, the permanent availability of the employees and last but not least their grounded economic know-how, which was not only very helpful defining the planning processes, convinced us.

“If you have the courage to break up and re-arrange existing structures and processes, you can save a lot of time, effort and money with a centralized Project Performance Management tool. With the help of smartPM.solutions consultants, Hamburg Airport saves several Mio. Euro every year: As the logical result of the rigid and systemimmanent cost-control of the PPM tool – that resonates very well, considering software costs in the low six-digit range.”

“At Hillebrand we needed to adopt our CPM system quickly because we wanted to include in our reporting and forecasting system the COVID-19 impact estimates. That’s why we reached out to smartPM.solutions on Thursday. Their consultants started working on the requirements, and our system was up and running with the specified enhancements (we call it ‘COVID-19 impact overview’) in our productive environment next day afternoon. This is what I call agile and helpful.”

We were looking for a flexible reporting and planning solution to cover our requirements in S&OP, Project/Client Performance Management and Integrated Financial Planning. What we gained was a very open and configurable CPM platform which was set up using expert implementation support from smartPM.solutions. They understood our business cases quickly and managed to help us obtain real value from the solution straight away.

“We demand a lot from a CPM tool: it needs to allow for mid- and long-term bottom line simulation, including financial derivates impact analysis. We expect the system to connect data and experts from several departments and take our existing, spreadsheet based approach to the next level: this is what we call true integrated business planning. smartPM.solutions’ Professional Services team has built a fully functional prototype with our data in no time, including balance sheets for several periods. Because of their obvious expert know how in connected planning it was an easy decision for us. We expect to be able to work with the system in a few weeks.”

“As part of the consolidation of the DEW21 subgroup, the consultants from smartPM.solutions provided us with comprehensive support. Any questions, suggestions and system-related problems were processed promptly and implemented competently and purposefully. This enabled us, in particular, to significantly accelerate the process of intercompany reconciliation while maintaining consistently high data quality. Due to this data quality, the final consolidation of the DEW21 subgroup could be carried out without any problems.”

“We had to build our monthly sales reports with Excel in the past – this was error-prone, slow and painful. Now we automatically connect our reporting system to our source systems like SAP and Soptim. Thus we can analyze and report data ad-hoc or in a pre-defined, standardized way, addressing the needs of all stakeholders individually. It was a good decision to work with smartPM.solutions: they know the CPM software inside out, easily connect source systems and manage the project in a straight-forward way.”

We have been successfully working with smartpm.solutions’ Professional Services team for several years, with exceptional results regarding time to completion, agility and business results. As a Professional Services driven company, we use our Performance Management Solution for Budgeting, Reporting, What If Analysis and decision support – it helped us speed up our processes significantly and build a better foundation for our decisions. Even though my time available for the system is scarce because of my role as Group CFO, I personally create new content and administrate the system, since it is easy to use and we benefit from quick results.

“The project really brought us forward. Thanks to the highly flexible platform and the professional and uncomplicated cooperation with the consultants from smartPM.solutions, we have gained valuable quality time that we can now use for the really important tasks.The high level of user-friendliness of the systems, the good price-performance ratio and the comprehensive advice convinced us of the FP&A solution and smartPM.solutions. The quality of our data and forecasts as well as the speed has significantly increased. We’re able to apply new features and ways of thinking that the tool allows us, which were difficult to implement previously using Excel. As the next step, we are planning to integrate project performance management into our system.”

Our consultants from smartPM.solutions have a very high level of specialist knowledge both in the field of business administration and in the specific topics of the transport and energy supply industry with regard to the requirements for planning and reporting. This is particularly important for us as a group. Due to their strong background, they have a perfect command of our controlling software and are therefore the single point of contact for us, guarantee fast response times and unbureaucratic help in an emergency. In addition, sPM take care of the coordination with technical service providers in the background, for example for software updates and connection of legacy systems such as SAP. That makes smartPM.solutions the ideal partner for all organizational and technical aspects of corporate planning, measure/project controlling and reporting.

“Markus Edlinger, Head of Professional Services at
smartPM.solutions, personally oversees the Project Performance Management at AIT, “… with exceptionally high personal commitment, great PM competence and excellent technical skills.”

At myAbility, we quickly needed a flexible planning systemthat was easy to use and modularly expandable. With smartPM.solutions we have found the right implementation partner and with JEDOX the right technology for our personnel planning as well as integrated financial planning.

As an innovative company, we are always actively looking for new processes and solutions. smartPM.solutions has convinced us of the advantages of their new AI-based models and their forecast quality.

For me personally, working with the new planning software is a lot of fun … You can start ad-hoc analysis or link numbers at a speed that isn’t possible in any other planning system. You can click on a number in the report and then a completely different diagram is shown. That’s impressive.

“INNIO chose smartPM.solutions as the technology and
implementation provider because it had the expected solution flexibility and automation. Even during our first conversations, it felt like we were talking the same language. smartPM was always available for us and responded quickly to requests during the testing and planning phase.”

“Our goal was to replace the old decentralized system with amodern integrated planning system. Forecasts during the year were also an issue. We wanted to relieve employees and use them to create more value. We have greatly benefited from the 25 years of EVU experience of the smartPM Teams and the existing system content .”

“Before, we needed around 5 to 8 man-days for each forecast and every budget to prepare the relevant files, i.e. all that is needed to prepare the actual data and compare it with the current plans. And if we talked about 5 to 8 man-days, then we are now talking about half a man-day, and this is only used to check the data for completeness. That is all the effort that we have now with data preparation.“

Thanks to the integrated way of working, we collect data only once, offer calculations are passed on in the workflow to project management, all reports are generated automatically and connected planning no longer requires manual intervention. Processes have turned lean, quality has increased significantly, and our team focuses on the essential, result-producing work. Within one year, we see a saving of time of at least 2,5 FTE across the entire company.

“I can no longer imagine making decisions or controlling without an integrated real estate controlling system. Neither in the strategic nor in the operational area. In it, we map the complete corporate planning and, based on this, develop our strategic goals and corresponding measures. The key figure system, the reports, forecasts and ad-hoc and scenario analyzes are also quickly available and supply the essential information.
We simply enjoy working with this system and the smartPM team. In doing so, we are increasingly improving our processes and the system independently. In the event that we need support with the implementation or new ideas, only the specialists from smartPM.solutions come into question. The smartPM team has convincing knowledge of the industry and is very reliable – we have only had good experiences with them so far.”
Jan Philipp Obermann, GWG Wuppertal

”…In order to enable us to map the EU-Taxonomy criteria for our industry sector – the energy industry – extensive data collection, changes and enrichments in our existing data structures were necessary: reporting criteria are now required, which in large parts are not part of the accounting material. Extensive enrichment and interlinking of the existing data and systems is therefore necessary. … Very soon we made the decision to get external support for our Sustainability Controlling and Reporting. Our choice fell on the consulting team of smartPM.solutions. After an intensive briefing, the smartPM team rapidly got to grips with the subject and contributed a tremendous amount of energy to ensure that we were able to meet all the EU taxonomy requirements on schedule. As a result, the application has reached a scope and profundity that makes our reporting capability exemplary in terms of sustainability and environmental effectiveness; we were one of the first companies ever to be able to meet the reporting requirements on time. The fact that we succeeded in this great feat is also due to the know-how of the smartPM consultants and their dedication to the cause.“

“We used to spend hours juggling Excel spreadsheets to create accurate planning. Now we can generate detailed liquidity forecasts on a weekly basis at the touch of a button and have a seamless link to the forecast. This not only saves us an enormous amount of time, but also gives us an accurate picture of our financial situation.”