Efficient Budgeting & Workflow
Vodafone Germany, headquartered in Düsseldorf, is one of the leading German communication conglomerates with 44 million customers and €12 billion in revenue. 16,000 Vodafone employees ensure every day that internet, mobile, fixed-line, and television services are delivered seamlessly. Vodafone is tasked with coordinating 2,200 projects based on PSP elements each year. Since November 2018, 160 users have been using Allevo for project control in the SAP IM/PS module.
Efficient Project Budgeting & Workflows with Agenda Functionality
"Vodafone Germany employs Allevo not for the typical annual business planning at the cost center level (including hierarchies) like most Allevo customers, but for budgeting specific scenarios, namely projects, during the current fiscal year," says Martin Brand, Senior Controller Finance Technology Capex Controlling, Vodafone Germany. This means that concrete projects are managed using Allevo, and budget adjustments are directly booked into SAP. Due to the strict budget availability control and the multitude of connected systems, it was essential for Vodafone to model and manage critical daily workflows with Allevo. "We wanted to see the status of each individual process in the workflow - whether something has already been sent or not. (...) With the agenda function in Allevo, we were able to cover all of this very well, as the optional read function allows a user to view historical budgeting without the SAP object lock preventing new budgeting on the same project by another user."
A Time Savings of One Workday per Process
The previous process of project budgeting at Vodafone was highly complex, involving many sub-steps and requiring the involvement of many individuals, "who all had to act in a defined sequence," says Martin Brand, Vodafone Germany. Prior to Allevo, many transfers of CSV files and manual steps were necessary due to a partially automated process. Because of the long process duration, it often happened that active processes had to be revised with changes. These revised processes had to be manually adjusted and booked, resulting in incorrect numbers initially appearing in the system. "This naturally cost a lot of time and coordination." Thanks to Allevo and its direct integration into SAP, the processing time has now decreased significantly, as manual transfers are no longer necessary. Processes that previously took a day are now much more efficient: "The processing time has been reduced from a day to a few minutes," emphasizes Annegret Spitmann, Senior Controller Finance Technology Capex Controlling, Vodafone Germany. Additionally, the speed within the project itself has been significantly improved by Allevo, as all information on orders and transfers can be accessed at any time, allowing for quicker execution. "You can solve the problem with Allevo during a meeting," says Martin Brand. By eliminating additional setup times during the process, controlling can directly initiate follow-up processes and expedite projects.
Easy Integration & User-Friendly Interface in SAP
Due to Allevo's direct integration into Vodafone's SAP system, no extensive implementation was necessary on the IT side. "Our entire SAP system is designed so that not every national company gets its individual wishes fulfilled, but that it can primarily be maintained and updated centrally. (...) Therefore, it is enormously helpful that Allevo is technically cleanly depicted and integrated into SAP with its own namespace. Allevo uses SAP standards, which keeps our effort for regular regression tests very low," says Martin Brand. At the same time, it is important to Vodafone that users can continue to work in their familiar environment, which Allevo ensures with its individually customizable Excel interface. "We saw exactly this advantage of Allevo, which other solutions did not offer. (...) That means we could replicate the Allevo user interface in our look & feel so that we practically only had to tell the user: For this case, you just have to log in to a different system, and everything else is — a bit exaggeratedly said — self-explanatory."
An additional value that Allevo offers is the ability to work with parameters on the Excel interface: "Another advantage of the product is its flexibility. Because much doesn't need to be implemented in code, but can be solved via parameters, so you are always flexible," says Annegret Spitmann.