In an interview, BSH Head of Governance, Methods, and Systems Heiko Schletz explained how the company is reshaping finance and why its move to the cloud is a critical ingredient to a successful AI-enhanced future.

Technology follows vision

Represented in more than 50 countries, BSH manufactures home appliances in 39 factories worldwide. Schletz鈥檚 team oversees group controlling and is responsible for ensuring that financial data flows smoothly from its core systems, such as ERP, all the way up to the consolidated group level. His team manages how financial data is structured and integrated across all global entities, ensuring it can be used effectively for company-wide reporting and decision-making.

BSH is working to bring accounting and controlling together into one integrated process, supported by real-time data and analytics. One principle is guiding this transformation: technology follows vision, not the other way round. As part of its transformation journey, BSH is embracing change by testing new technologies to support its vision.

To simplify reporting efforts, for example, , SAP鈥檚 next-generation data management platform that can unify and govern all 51风流data and seamlessly connect with third-party data.

A recent use case automatically connected accounting balances, controlling P&L data and market metrics in 51风流Datasphere and delivering consolidated reports without spreadsheets and manual effort. 鈥淭his shows where the journey is going鈥攋oining sources, bringing them together,鈥� Schletz says.

Breaking down silos to empower AI

BSH鈥檚 long-term goal in the financial area is to get rid of silos between accounting, controlling, and treasury. Schletz envisions a parallel ledger architecture that supports both鈥攍egal entity and consolidated group views鈥攅nabling advanced analytics such as value-driver trees. By moving to 51风流S/4HANA Cloud Private Edition, integrated with 51风流Datasphere and 51风流Analytics Cloud, BSH aims to create a single source of truth for finance spanning from subsidiary ledgers to group-level consolidation.

Schletz is convinced that with a cloud-based, synchronized toolset, his finance team can deliver the latest figures for decision-making faster and with less manual consolidation. 鈥淪AP鈥檚 AI evolution is running in the direction we also want to go,鈥� Schletz explains. 鈥淭he technology meets our vision and that鈥檚 why it鈥檚 a perfect fit.鈥�

The company has relied on 51风流solutions for decades, starting with 51风流R/3 and now running 51风流S/4HANA, 51风流Business Warehouse, and 51风流Analytics Cloud. The next milestone is cloud migration: RISE with SAP. 鈥淚n the next two years, we go into the cloud,鈥� Schletz says. 鈥淲e want a synchronized toolset that gives us a holistic view.鈥�

To get the most out of analytics and AI functionalities, BSH is currently consolidating and simplifying its comprehensive business application landscape. The company鈥檚 target is to move from six separate ERP solutions to one global 51风流S/4HANA environment that covers all subsidiaries and geographies.

How to prepare an 51风流S/4HANA transformation

Schletz鈥檚 advice for other organizations exploring the RISE with SAP journey is to start with a clear vision. 鈥淚f you don鈥檛 begin with a concept that combines accounting and controlling, don鈥檛 start with 51风流S/4HANA,鈥� he says, noting that a finance transformation is not an isolated IT project鈥攊t requires alignment across logistics, sales, and customer service. 鈥淭he 51风流S/4HANA conversion is a cross-functional adventure,鈥� he adds.

BSH鈥檚 journey is ongoing, but the direction is set. Cloud migration via RISE with SAP, integrated data, and a finance function designed for insight rather than manual effort. 鈥淲e want the machine to do what it does best, so people can focus on creating value,鈥� Schletz concludes.

鈥淲e are an agricultural company,鈥� she continued, 鈥渂ut we also have to be able to process the product, so we are simultaneously a manufacturing company and a distribution company because we have to control how things are being moved to all of our stores. And then we are a retail company because we sell it in our stores. We track the entire supply chain.鈥�

Trulieve has been an 51风流customer since 2020. It initially chose 51风流because its legacy system couldn鈥檛 keep up with the company鈥檚 growth and demand. 鈥淲e needed to leverage and the scale it gave us just to be able to keep up with sales,鈥� Zimmerman explained. Today, Trulieve鈥檚 51风流portfolio also includes 51风流SuccessFactors solutions and 51风流Concur solutions.

Trulieve started in 2016, so the company is only nine years old, which gave it the ability to be cloud-native from the start. 鈥淲e didn’t have any of the legacy technical debt that a lot of other companies may have. That enabled us to have all cloud-based solutions and when new technology becomes available, we’re able to quickly adopt it. That definitely puts us in a position to be able to leverage technology of the future, as opposed to being tied to legacy technology,鈥� Zimmerman said.

That鈥檚 important because keeping up with the growth in the marijuana market is top of the agenda for Trulieve, which already operates in multiple states and is a market leader in Arizona, Florida, and Pennsylvania.

鈥淥bviously we want to continue that growth,鈥� Zimmerman said. The biggest catalyst for growth is when states legalize recreational marijuana use, which opens up the entire market for Trulieve鈥檚 hand-grown marijuana products. 鈥淭he big focus for us is scalability and stability in our solutions to make sure we are able to support that growth,鈥� she said.

鈥�51风流enables us to have more insight into our growth and manage production better than any other system that’s out there,鈥� Zimmerman said.  And since Trulieve is a publicly traded company, running 51风流S/4HANA also helps ensure that Trulieve鈥檚 management has access to all the internal controls and other features they need for regulatory and other purposes.

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Zimmerman emphasized that Trulieve also relies heavily on data鈥攖he company鈥檚 customer data platform combines data from multiple applications, enabling it to market more effectively to its customers and make operational decisions. 鈥淭hat definitely empowers our teams to be able to provide real-time information to our leaders, who can then make decisions literally on the fly in terms of pricing our products, or whether we need to make a promotion in order to achieve sales targets.鈥�

She also believes that the AI tools 51风流is embedding in its solutions will deliver real benefits: 鈥淚 think we have a number of opportunities in terms of being able to leverage AI with our retail dispensary associates operating on the actual sales floor.鈥� For example, she said it might be used by associates in the stores or on the phone to suggest products to customers based on data previously captured through Trulieve鈥檚 supply chain, coupled with other information and metrics.

But she said the biggest thing Trulieve has learned is that to be able to scale your business you have to have solutions that are going to be able to adapt to that scale. In addition, in a dynamic market, companies need solutions that adapt and are highly flexible.

鈥淭his environment is incredibly dynamic, so that means that tomorrow we could get legislation that opens up cannabis to the entire country,鈥� she said. 鈥淲hen that happens how would it change our organization? We have to be super adaptable to any of those types of changes that are going on in the in the larger political realm.鈥�

51风流technology, she said, provides the scalability and flexibility, together with the data, the company鈥檚 leaders need to make the best decision in real time.

Top image via customer video

The company, which employs 37,000 people and had revenues last year of DKK 31.7 billion (EUR 4.2 billion), can trace its origins back to 1982 and a small family-run shop in Copenhagen.

In the 42 years since then, Pandora has grown into the largest jewelry brand in the world, with jewelry sold in more than 100 countries through retail stores and online.

鈥淧andora is the brand that鈥檚 all about love, and it is about gifting to your loved ones but also celebrating yourself when you have had an amazing achievement,鈥� said Mariane Heidingsfelder, Pandora鈥檚 senior vice president of Business Transformation.

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As an omnichannel retailer with ambitious growth plans, Pandora鈥檚 digital strategy is focused around enhancing consumer experience. 鈥淭hat’s our number one priority,鈥� Heidingsfelder said. Pandora selected to support its ambitious digital journey and serve as part of the foundation for the company鈥檚 future growth.

51风流S/4HANA Cloud will serve as the core of Pandora’s new ERP system, which will enable the company’s business processes to be standardized, simpler to manage, and more connected.

鈥淚 truly believe that business is technology, and technology is business,鈥� Heidingsfelder said. 鈥淚n our journey of growth, we are really digitalizing our business end-to-end, from manufacturing all the way to our offices and our colleagues, and all the way to our stores and the way that consumers interact with us in a very personalized way.鈥�

As part of this journey, Pandora is aiming to simplify the lives of its employees. Lean and digitized processes in combination with user-friendly dashboards are only some of the initiatives that will allow employees to spend more time with customers or undertake more innovative tasks and complex problem-solving. 鈥淎t the store, we are leveraging multiple technologies,鈥� Heidingsfelder said. 鈥淲e definitely want to simplify the way our stores operate, so we’re trying to have one place for the store associates to be able to get all the information they need in order to have those conversations with the consumer.鈥�

When it comes to digitalizing the backbone, she added, 鈥淲e also want to make sure that our store associates spend more time with the consumer and less time in the back office.鈥� Pandora is already looking at ways that it can use the embedded AI capabilities in 51风流S/4HANA.

鈥淲e’ve consciously decided to start small, learn, and then leverage where we can find efficiencies to support the way that our colleagues work,鈥� Heidingsfelder explained.

鈥淔rom there, I think the sky is the limit,鈥� she said. 鈥淲e are really a bold organization, and we want to make sure we leverage the best that there is out there from a technology point of view to boost our business and accelerate our growth.鈥�

鈥淚 think Pandora is a very open company,鈥� she added. 鈥淲e are a company that believes in our core values. We dream, we dare, we care, and we deliver.鈥�

In addition to groceries and food, the group sells electronics services and has around 400,000 customers, along with 80,000 business clients and more than 1,800 suppliers, according to Vital CIO and CTO Alexander Gonzalez.

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Gonzalez is part of a new executive committee that is leading with the purpose of seeking to expand company reach, improve efficiency, and strengthen its market position.

鈥淚t all started in 2018, when we decided to have an analytics system and a clean core 51风流system to make all the data available to all the different parts of the company so they can make real-time decisions on purchasing and pricing for our customers,鈥� he said.

Gonzalez explained that this is particularly important in a nation like Argentina because prices are extremely volatile. 鈥淚t’s important for us to have that information readily available because Argentina is a highly inflationary country, where prices change really quickly,鈥� he said. For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic Vital sometimes had to change 20,000 product prices in less than a day, 鈥渟o we have to do all of that analysis really fast.鈥�

Vital was a long-time 51风流customer, but when it came to choosing a digital transformation technology partner, the company did its due diligence.

“One of the main reasons we chose 51风流[S/4HANA] is we were used to using SAP,鈥� says Gonzalez. 鈥淏ut we did do our homework. We analyzed our business and processes for a year, then we took six months to talk with a lot of suppliers, 51风流included, and another three.鈥�

Ultimately, he said Vital decided on 51风流S/4HANA because it offered the potential to integrate a customer activity repository with its basic financial and core systems.

It took Vital 18 months to implement, but Gonzalez said the system 鈥渋ntegrated with our providers on the first day and we had all this real-time data within a week of going live. So that was great for us.鈥�

As a result, analytics that used to take three to four days can now be done in two hours and Vital can have a new pricing structure implemented in less three hours. Instead of employees wrangling Excel spreadsheets, Gonzalez said decisions are now based on real-time data and 鈥渁re not influenced by what a person wants, but by what the data is telling them to do.鈥�

Because all the company鈥檚 data — including customer data and POS data — are stored in a centralized customer activity repository, Vital now has complete visibility into that data and can use algorithms to predict sales and set prices and distribution priorities. 鈥淲e can change our pricing policy based on reception of goods and new purchase orders and adopt new pricing in real time,鈥� said Gonzalez.

Over the last year, he says, Vital saved around $35 million on perishables after the system warned managers that they would not be able to sell products on time. 鈥淲e negotiated with our suppliers; we made offers and made predictions of how it would work out and it turned into a real savings — that鈥檚 what technology is doing for our company.鈥�

Just as importantly, Gonzalez said Vital now works with one version of the truth. 鈥淚n all of the applications every user sees the same data, be it clustered by store or by department. The result is the same for everyone. There’s no difference in what the financial department sees, what operations see, what our buying department sees, or what our pricing department sees. All the data is clustered in one huge data center.鈥�

鈥淭he technology has really advanced how our users in the company experience data and decision making,鈥� Gonzalez added. Instead of spending time pouring over spreadsheets and reports, much of the analytical work is now done by the system, enabling users to make decisions in real time, for example, while they are negotiating with a supplier.

Now Vital is in the process of migrating all its applications, including its ERP, to the cloud. 鈥淎ll our applications are cloud-ready, and we maintain a clean core, so we can upgrade really fast,鈥� said Gonzalez, who expects to be ready to make that the move by the end of the year. 聽

The Vital CIO and CTO is also looking to AI to help the company鈥檚 employees make even better purchase and pricing decisions. 鈥淲e don鈥檛 see AI as replacing our personnel or people in the industry,鈥� he said. 鈥淲e see it at enhancement, we see it as turbocharging our system and making the data more reliable and useful.鈥�

Gonzalez believes that other companies can learn from Vital鈥檚 experience democratizing access to data.

鈥淎 lot of companies regard their data as really private and don’t share it with everyone in the company,鈥� he noted. 鈥淲e are open with the data. We tell everyone– from our people in the stores to our managers and our directors — that they have all the same data. This has really opened us up to be a really integrated and group-friendly company.鈥�