Eucon, Inc.
Eucon, a digital transformation expert, helps companies automate their data-driven processes and has been delivering measurable success in the automotive, insurance, and real estate sectors for 20 years. To achieve significantly faster and more efficient results in planning processes and reporting, the Eucon Group decided to implement Board.
In the initial phase of the project, Eucon worked with our planning experts to develop revenue forecasts as well as CapEx and OpEx (capital and operational expenditure) plans. To calculate personnel costs within the OpEx plan and better plan human resources, Eucon implemented a pre-built HR planning solution we provided. This enables Eucon to perform detailed workforce planning, from capacity assessment and approval through to integrated personnel cost calculation.
The Company: Top-Notch Analysis
Eucon is one of the world’s leading providers of best-in-class market intelligence and data-driven systems for efficient product management in the automotive aftermarket. For insurers, Eucon analyzes, automates, and streamlines the claims process and offers intelligent solutions for data and document processing.
For real estate clients, Eucon analyzes business processes and digitizes the entire document and data workflow. At its locations around the world, approximately 400 employees serve 250 clients in 40 countries.
The facts at a glance:
✓ High forecast accuracy when calculating personnel costs
✓ Faster reporting
✓ Quick and easy management of organizational changes
✓ Integration into the entire corporate planning process
✓ Powerful analysis and simulation functions
✓ High performance and user-friendliness
The Challenge: Digitizing Planning and Reporting
As a pioneer of digital transformation for its clients, the Eucon Group set a strategic goal to successfully implement a digitalization initiative for its internal business processes as well—thereby capitalizing on significant efficiency and cost benefits. Among other things, the company took a close look at its reporting and planning processes.
Until now, Excel was the tool of choice for controlling. This involved sending numerous emails back and forth for planning purposes, and it was sometimes unclear how far along the planners had gotten, resulting in a significant time investment to keep the planning process up to date. “This potential for errors and the high manual effort involved in planning led to growing dissatisfaction with the planning processes,” explains Timo Welling, Head of Controlling at the Eucon Group. “We therefore wanted to find a tool that, on the one hand, integrates reporting and planning functionalities into a single platform and, on the other hand, offers the benefits of process and workflow management.” This was followed by an evaluation of various BI and planning tools, at the end of which the team decided on the all-in-one platform Board.
While the initial focus was on implementing integrated revenue planning, Eucon increasingly found it necessary to integrate HR planning into the new OpEx planning process. “Initially, we tried to set up HR planning ourselves in Board, but quickly realized that we were reaching our limits in terms of development without support, and then celver brought its ready-made solution for HR planning into play at just the right time,” says Katharina Grasser, Controlling Specialist at the Eucon Group. “That was a perfect fit for us, because the pre-built process logic allowed us to use a concrete framework as a guide, which greatly simplified the process of translating our own HR planning processes into the solution.”
The Solution: Efficient Planning Thanks to the HR Module
celver’s preconfigured, integrated HR solution covers everything from capacity planning and approval to integrated payroll calculation. “It was excellent to be able to build on all the standard functions right from the start; the basic framework and settings were already in place, and we were able to immediately begin planning personnel requirements at an aggregated level, requesting new staff, and then analyzing the data,” says Katharina Grasser. With the support of celver AG, the calculation logic was adapted to the Eucon Group’s business processes in a very short time. “The HR module was a real eye-opener for us in terms of what we actually need for HR planning,” explains Timo Welling.
Currently, approximately 40 users are utilizing the celver solution for planning and reporting. HR planning has initially been implemented on a quarterly basis, with hires and terminations recorded in the system on a monthly basis. In addition to the Controlling department, business unit managers are currently using the HR planning module. A further rollout to cost center managers and a monthly HR forecast are about to be implemented. “This would then mark the achievement of our originally planned target state,” explains Timo Welling, “though Board’s flexibility offers even more potential, and we’ve learned during celver’s excellent project support that, figuratively speaking, appetite always comes with eating.”
In addition to providing full transparency into key HR metrics—such as trends in personnel costs, FTEs, and headcount—the time required for the HR planning process has been significantly reduced. “Whereas we used to spend several weeks on HR planning with Excel, we can now complete the HR forecast in just four days,” says Timo Welling. “A monthly HR forecast would have been unthinkable in the past. Now it’s possible. In addition, the reporting process has also been drastically shortened. Three clicks and the data is visualized. Naturally, this went down very well with our management, and they were amazed that we could deliver new reports on the very same day—reports they used to have to wait several days for.”
A key priority for Eucon was workflow management and rapid data integration. The workflow management system was quickly adopted, and after an initial adaptation phase, user feedback regarding the intuitive usability of the celver solution and the high level of detail offered by the dashboard—such as through drill-down functionality—was very positive. “We still have some projects ahead of us regarding data integration,” says Timo Welling.
“We are currently implementing specialized HR software in place of the HR application in Navision. The data will be integrated into the HR module alongside the actual data from DATEV, enabling us to ensure even higher data quality in the future and thus achieve the most accurate possible forecast in HR planning. I am confident that celver will continue to provide us with excellent support in this area as well, because so far, the celver consultants have found the right solution for every challenge.”
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