Aebi Schmidt performs sales controlling using DeltaMaster

Aebi Schmidt relies on DeltaMaster for sales controlling. Data on products, materials, and customers is aggregated daily using Microsoft SQL Server. DeltaMaster is used for data analysis and planning and the subsequent reporting.

Aebi Schmidt is a well-known manufacturer of vehicles and equipment for snow clearance, de-icing, street cleaning, and road repair and of agricultural engineering for difficult terrain. The internationally active group, which is primarily represented by the Aebi and Schmidt brands, has 1,300 employees and generates annual revenue of around €300 million.

At Aebi Schmidt, sales data used to be analyzed in Excel and the planning for the next year done by unit quantities, revenue, and margins. This planning process required a great deal of manual work on the part of the controller. The use of business intelligence software was intended to relieve this burden and make the planning process more professional. The effort required for both local data acquisition and central administration needed to be reduced radically. With this in mind, the management defined the requirements for the new business intelligence tool: All of the relevant sales information for the groupwide analysis of customers, products, and markets should be aggregated in a single, cross-company-code data warehouse.

The solutions from various providers were examined and evaluated. Aebi Schmidt decided for DeltaMaster. “DeltaMaster can quickly build on data cubes such as Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle OLAP,“ explains Thomas Schenkirsch, Group Controller at Aebi Schmidt. “Many analysis options are already available by default so that reports can be generated quickly.“ In the first step, data on products, materials, customers, and the sales organization is taken from the operational SAP ERP modules on a daily basis and aggregated in Microsoft SQL Server. Analysis Services builds the data cubes and provides them to all users via DeltaMaster as a common front-end for reporting, analysis, and planning.

Planning plays a core role in the system. The company’s revenue planning is realized entirely using DeltaMaster.

A central process controls planning for the Aebi and Schmidt groups. Among other things, this produces the rough planning used by group management, while production planning relies on the planned quantities that are entered decentrally at the national subsidiaries. Individual projects can also be created and planned, such as new heavy clearing equipment for certain customers.

In addition to the monthly rolling forecast, which serves as the basis for plant capacity planning, DeltaMaster supports the budgeting process and the planning workflow. The controlling department uses this centrally to approve, monitor, and lock the planning, for example.

• Data warehouse Microsoft SQL Server/Analysis Services
• Sales data analysis, 83,000 products, 80 countries, 21,000 customers, 300,000 invoices
• Automated report distribution
• Annual planning, production planning, project planning
• Monthly rolling forecast as basis for plant capacity planning
• SAP as pre-system

• Leading global supplier of intelligent product systems and services for cleaning and clearing traffic areas and maintaining green spaces in challenging terrain
• Production plants in Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the USA
• over 2,000 employees worldwide
• around 500 million Euro turnover p. a.