Veho Streamlined Their Planning and Gained Better Visibility into the Future

Veho has executed a large-scale transformation during the past years. They needed to adapt to the ever-changing business environment and tools to support in the adaptation. With IBM’s tools they have been able to streamline their planning across the organization and make agile plans.

Business challenge

Old strategy planning was too detailed and concentrated to the tactical level planning. It didn’t offer tools to plan urgent and complicated non-organic growth-based projects agile and transparently thorough the planning model.

Transformation

Genuinely strategic planning model which encourage organization to really think about the strategic incentives and those impact to current business. Easy to include and communicate the strategic plans to all the stakeholders.

Results

Data driven decision making and transparency throughout the whole organization. Increased automatization and visibility into the future.

Watch Veho’s story from the video or read it below the video.

Case Story

Veho is a Daimler brands distributor and retailer in Finland and Baltics and a retailer in Sweden. Veho has executed a large-scale transformation during the past years, as has the whole car industry driven by megatrends such as consumerism, industry concentration, mobility services and of course sustainability.

The transformation has included investments and international growth. Groups biggest construction investment project, a new commercial vehicle center, opens to Vantaa by the end of year 2021. In Sweden Veho will have started operating at three new locations also by the end of 2021. Growth in Baltics started in 2019, when Veho bought Silberauto, which represents Mercedes-Benz in Estonia and Lithuania.

As Veho needed to adapt and change along with the industry and ever-changing business environment, they needed to have tools that support their decision making. At Veho decision making is a collaborative process where they keep all their stakeholders informed with the right data for them to be able to contribute to the common goal.

We collect forecasts from all our lines of business and create a common understanding of what lies ahead. The data collected is then used for a base for the discussions about the future directions with the management.

Markus Sahlsten, Controller, Group Finance Systems, - Veho

“We collect forecasts from all our lines of business and create a common understanding of what lies ahead. The data collected is then used for a base for the discussions about the future directions with the management and board and also with our “partners” at Daimler,” says Markus Sahlsten, Controller, Group Finance Systems.

IBM Planning Analytics has been Veho’s planning tool for several years. In collaboration with Intito they have been able to unify and streamline their planning across the organization. IBM Planning Analytics supports data-driven decision making at Veho and enables faster more agile plans. “We are pleased about the partnership with Intito and tools provided by IBM,” says Sahlsten.

Recently Veho has had lot of use for the functionality that they developed to build scenarios about their future business plans. They can plan their current business as it is and then add upcoming development projects or strategic incentives and see how those would affect Veho’s business all the way from the operational indicators till balance sheet and cash flow. “We get real visibility and understanding of the impact of our future plans. That transparency is a key element when communicating the projects to stakeholders,” says Sahlsten.

Besides IBM Planning Analytics as Veho’s solution for business planning, Veho has used IBM Cognos Controller for financial consolidation for many years. During these years Veho has been able to add automatization to the consolidation process. They have also gained a better transparency to the group accounting. One of the advantages IBM Cognos Controller enables for Veho is agility to the ever-changing Group structure.

Currently Veho is unifying their business planning by bringing their reporting processes to IBM Planning Analytics. This will simplify Veho’s dataflow and make planning and reporting faster and easier. Veho is also adjusting their reporting to match with Daimler’s product groups, which are trucks and buses, and personal cars and vans.

“At Veho we have decided to drive into the future with the best partner and focus solely on the cars from Daimler. We see that partnering with the best in the industry is the key to success in any business,” says Sahlsten.

Veho

Veho is a Finnish company established in 1939. They provide mobility solutions in Finland, Sweden and Baltic countries. Veho has about 2000 employees, 1250 in Finland and over 750 in Sweden and Baltics. Company’s turnover in 2020 was 1111 million. Veho was established to import Mercedes-Benz vehicles, and the brand is still in the core of their business. In the revolution of motoring, transportation and mobility, Veho offers its customers versatile mobility services and transportation solutions from passenger cars to heavy trucks.

Solution components

- IBM Planning Analytics Cloud
- IBM Cognos Controller

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