Vaasan has leveraged AI to predict future outcomes

5.8.2021

THINK 2021 was held on May 12^th. It is one of the biggest events IBM organizes yearly. This spring the theme of the event was the future of hybrid cloud and AI. One of the Data & AI sessions during THINK covered how Finnish Bakery, Vaasan has taken big steps on leveraging AI to predict future outcomes and enhance financial and operational planning.

Leverage AI to predict future outcomes and enhance financial and operational planning

Check out the recording of the session and learn how to utilize planning technology to deliver faster, more agile integrated plans that can pivot in real time — and arm you with predictive insights to enhance business workflows. Or read the key takeaways below the video.

Key takeaways from the session

Organizations using manual and disconnected processes are faced with many challenges during their planning process. Their planning cycles become lengthy and painful, which makes them vulnerable to the ever-changing business environment.

Three biggest issues manual and disconnected planning creates:

1. Disconnected financial and operational planning creates analytics silos.
2. Processes are slow and lack agility.
3. Data accuracy is decreased.

IBM Planning Analytics with Watson enables integrated business planning and the use of advanced analytics. Organizations can benefit from the predictive analytics, decision optimization and AI capabilities it offers.

Why IBM Planning Analytics with Watson?

1. Acceleration – Faster planning, forecasting and analysis cycles.
2. Collaboration – Synchronizer processes and data across the organization.
3. Agility – Easily adjust plans and forecast in real time to adapt to changes.

Vaasan operates in fast moving consumer goods. They sell bread that is baked in the morning and sold during the same day. They have a lot of data coming in every day, so planning must be extremely fast, agile and automated. Because of COVID19 Vaasan’s demand was doubled in March 2020 in one night.

“COVID19 was a perfect stress-test for our planning process. The automated and streamlined planning process was our biggest help when COVID19 hit the European market. We could alter our plans the next day and prepare for the coming months right away” says Joonas Alasaari, Senior Business Conroller at Vaasan.

With the help of IBM Planning Analytics with Watson and Cognos Analytics, Intito helped Vaasan use predictive capabilities in three unique ways across their business:

1. Predicting energy consumption and costs.
2. Long-term product planning.
3. Analyzing cost center trends.

Integrated business planning has helped Vaasan to gain pretty accurate estimates about the future and how different scenarios would affect their business. They are well prepared for the future and can act and adapt fast to the ever-changing business environment.

If you are interested in integrated business planning and want to know more about it, contact us!

Eve Lallukka

Marketing Manager