Client

Our client is one of the largest fresh produce distributors in the Southern Hemisphere.

Brief

The brief was to build a standardised rolling budgeting & planning model for each company within the client’s wider business group. The model had to be able to adjust to fit the differing scale of each company.

The standardised model needed to:

• include the ability to forecast different fresh produce types within different fresh produce categories within the various business units of the company;
• include import and export mechanisms with Hyperion to extract historical data and upload various forecast cases;
• allow for multiple currencies for pricing;
• accommodate a wide range of working capital types and forecast mechanisms;
• deal with intercompany transactions; and
• allow for the allocation of expenses forecast at a company level into the individual business units.

Solution

Our solution required the creation of the following different types of business unit modules to accommodate all companies with different purposes:

• management – to accommodate overheads, interest and tax expenses;
• trading – local trade of fresh produce;
• export – sale of fresh produce to foreign markets; and
• services – to allow for revenue and expenses from non-fresh produce businesses.

Each company model had the ability to include as many different types of the business unit modules as required.

The model was based around the following key modules:

• business unit – builds up revenue and cost of goods sold by fresh produce type
• working capital – detailed working capital modules for various types of debtors and creditors with the ability to choose different forecast mechanisms for each type.
• Hyperion infrastructure – allowed the model to integrate cohesively with Hyperion both from a download of historical data and upload of forecast and budget data perspective.
• reporting – a number of dashboard presentations to allow the user to cut through the detailed information and gain a quick understanding of the companies’ forecast.

Modano Benefits

From an end user perspective, the Modano software automated the following model development processes:

• monthly roll-forward;
• the addition of fresh produce types;
• the addition of business units;
• the addition of Hyperion accounts; and
• the ability to increase the split of a number of Balance Sheet items as required for increased forecasting accuracy of cash flow.