Conmetall Meister: Sales reporting with DeltaMaster reports
Conmetall Meister, a system supplier for hardware stores, uses DeltaMaster to analyze data from SoftM and SAP. More than 100 users use the centrally provided reports. The main focus is on sales.
Conmetall Meister offers around 40,000 products. The result is a high degree of data complexity, as Mirco Lischka, controller at Conmetall Meister, explains: “Our various sales organizations mean we have more than 30 million data records in our sales system alone, including 22 million billing items. We also have around six million order items in Procurement, 420,000 product data records, over 30,000 profitability segments for customers, and around 6,500 for suppliers.”
Conmetall Meister was previously unable to fully harness the benefits of analyzing this diverse pool of data. “We were able to generate revenue and gross profit. Other important key figures, however, had to be calculated manually, which was a timeconsuming process,” Lischka explains. “This involved using vast and unwieldy walls of Excel spreadsheets to prepare analyses manually.”
In addition to more flexible analyses, Conmetall Meister wanted to be able to provide employees at departmental management level and senior managers with easily comprehensible reports in a simpler and more needs-oriented manner than was previously the case.
DeltaMaster impresses with variety and functions
When it came to selecting a suitable analysis and reporting tool, Conmetall Meister left nothing to chance: The IT department presented various OLAP-based solutions to a committee of employees from the specialist departments. These solutions were then evaluated in the form of a questionnaire.
The DeltaMaster business intelligence suite from Bissantz met with the best response among users. Decisive factors besides its intuitive operation were the variety of analysis options, its refined report distribution functions, and its ease of connection to the ERP systems.
Report distribution using DeltaMaster Repository
One particularly valuable component for Conmetall Meister is the DeltaMaster Repository, a central database for the provision of applications and reports. Conmetall Meister uses it to supply its employees with reports.
Role management is used to define exactly who gets to ‘see’ which reports. Unlike report distribution in file format, this ensures that reports are not reproduced and amended in an uncoordinated manner.
“DeltaMaster allows us to provide our managers with clearly visualized reports on a centralized basis. And we can control precisely what information and functions are offered to each user.”
Mirco Lischka, controller at Conmetall Meister
Key figures and comparisons
The ‘Daily Billing’ statistic is among the most important reports. It shows the revenue billed on a given day, the monthly projection and target, as well as a prior-period comparison between the average daily value for the same month of the previous year and the current value – all broken down by product range, customer group, etc.
The sales team uses the central statistics to obtain information on revenue, margins, and target-actual variances. Field sales employees are provided with analyses of actual and target revenue and the number and length of visits to a given customer.
Procurement receives key figures such as stock levels and turnover, purchasing advantages and disadvantages, purchase volumes, and purchase price development. The development of missing quantities in the individual product segments and the main product groups is also reported. As the parent of Conmetall Meister, the Würth Group is regularly provided with key figures such as the revenue, gross profit, as well as customer and product structure of the Conmetall Meister group. Analyses of delivery quotas, credit notes, and missing quantities are also provided.
Visualization with Graphical Tables
Graphical Tables from DeltaMaster ensure that information is not only available, but also understood: “Revenue variances are visualized using sparklines, bars, and colors. Red stands for negative developments, blue for positive ones. The development of margins is presented using line sparklines,” Lischka explains. “This allows patterns and trends to be identified at a glance, followed by a deeper analysis of the data in order to establish the precise relationships.
Now we can see what is happening more quickly and more accurately. To give an example: Previously, we were only able to examine the success of our customer business once a quarter. The necessary figures had to be painstakingly extracted from the transactional systems and processed in Excel. Now we can generate the information directly in DeltaMaster and see how successful our customer business has been for each product segment at the end of each month – at the touch of a button.”
Looking to the future: Analysis AND planning
Lischka adds that in the future the business intelligence solution will also be used for planning: “We are currently developing a DeltaMaster application that will allow us to plan all revenues and costs that are allocable to our customers and product segments. We also intend to run our P&L planning in DeltaMaster.”
Highlights
- More than 100 DeltaMaster users
- Reports made available via central database
- Flexible analysis and simple report distribution
Conmetall Meister
- System supplier for hardware and DIY stores both nationally and internationally
- 40,000 stock items: tools, ironware, garden, bathroom, power tools, electrical installation
- Part of the Würth Group
- 900 employees
What our sales customers are saying
“I was impressed! I never thought implementation could be so quick.”
Egbert Veit, Sales Director, Deuter Sport GmbH
“DeltaMaster gives me the freedom to work with the figures instead of spending my time preparing them.”
Melanie Rosenberger, Business Intelligence team leader at Scherdel
“The time and effort required for optimal reporting has been reduced significantly and the accuracy of planning has increased.”
Dietmar Quatember, Head of IT, Salinen Austria
“The entire management team is impressed by the reports.”
Thomas Rieß, Senior Controller, Schwartau
“Automatic analyses allow us to focus on what really matters.”
Heike Wüsthoff, Controlling, Gustav Alberts
“We can calculate our items reliably – for intelligently developed prices that we also use tactically.”
David Harms, Head of Procurement and Controlling, Motea GmbH
“DeltaMaster allows us to tweak our tariffs in a targeted manner and identify trends at an early stage.”
Marcus Kresin, Group CIO, INTRO Aviation
“Before DeltaMaster, our data was downright chaotic. Now we have achieved greater revenue awareness and a better understanding of the figures.”
Johanna Gärtner, Commercial Director, Wenco
“Now we can see what is happening more accurately and more quickly. We can see how successful our customer business has been for each product segment at the touch of a button.”
Mirco Lischka, Controller at Conmetall Meister
“DeltaMaster allows variance analyses to be carried out extremely quickly and easily.”
Egbert Veit, Commercial Director, Deuter Sport
“DeltaMaster shows us the data from any perspective and in any depth. This is incredibly useful for us.”
Petra Bayer, Media Sales, Mediengruppe Oberfranken
“All in all, we have reduced eight man days to just half a day. That’s what I call effective!”
Thomas Rieß, Senior Controller, Schwartau
“High performance, high flexibility, high implementation speed – that’s why we chose DeltaMaster.”
Oliver Kissel, Sales Manager, Daimler
“DeltaMaster is my most important tool for daily reporting and analysis. Once you understand the logic, the possibilities for analysis are almost boundless.”
Michael Jungmann, Pricing Manager, Bürkert
“Without the DeltaMaster solution, answering certain time-critical inquiries from the managing directors or fund and risk managers would require significantly more time and effort.”
Dr. Sebastian Brandt, Head of Controlling, HANSAINVEST Real Assets
“DeltaMaster is a phenomenal analysis tool!”
Harald Huber, Head of Accounting and Controlling, Media Markt Switzerland
“DeltaMaster gives us undeniable business benefits thanks to its reliable figures, clever analysis options, and first-class support.”
, Commercial Director, Deuter Sport
Egbert Veit,