Salinen Austria unearths new insights with DeltaMaster
Austria’s leading manufacturer of salt products uses DeltaMaster across its entire value chain. It rolled out its first project in 2008, with many more following over the years.
Salinen Austria AG is Austria’s leading manufacturer of salt products such as household salt, industrial salt, chemically pure salt for the pharmaceutical industry, as well as deicing salt for winter road maintenance. The company, which produces over 1 million tons of salt annually, generated around €130 million in revenues with a workforce of 470 people in the 2013 fiscal year.
Better performance management
Salinen Austria needed a new solution to manage its performance across all departments and subsidiaries. Its main goals were to incorporate all key performance indicators, provide central access to the data of its international subsidiaries, and simplify the complex, time-consuming data integration process. Other objectives included improving planning accuracy and adapting management reports without IT assistance.
The company chose DeltaMaster back in 2008 and has used the Business Intelligence software as a central analysis, reporting, and planning tool ever since. The overall solution closely resembles a data warehouse architecture. Data from various source systems is pooled into a central staging area, where it is prepared for further processing.
This feeds into multidimensional OLAP databases based on Microsoft Analysis Services.
Users access the data using a variety of DeltaMaster applications, which a team of management accountants and IT built in cooperation with the respective departments. The division of labor is well organized. IT takes care of the data warehouse in coordination with the management accountants who, in turn, are solely responsible for building and distributing the reports.
Used across the value-added chain
Salinen Austria uses DeltaMaster in many ways across its value-added chain. The benefits of using the software have grown as well:
The new system made precise sales planning possible for the first time ever. Distribution algorithms, for example, depict seasonal scenarios. The software also shows an automated preview of gross margin. The sophisticated forecasting on article and customer levels enables a better coordination between short-term and mid-term sales development, open orders, and the complete production and inventory management.
The company can recognize production bottlenecks or warehouse shortages at an early stage. The freight cost analysis module identifies freight cost drivers and provides continual information on the current state of freight costs from various angles down to individual invoices. Based on updated forecasts, the system automatically calculates developments in freight costs.
By calculating various logistics KPIs including timeliness, delivery deadlines, unloading times, and waiting times, the company can evaluate individual haulers and its own processes. Visualizing expenses down to individual records including posting texts in cost center accounting helps carefully control running costs.
For the first time ever, the company conducted its entire cost planning with a bottom-up approach and processed it in various aggregation levels. DeltaMaster has dramatically accelerated this time-critical process. The company has made drastic savings in palette purchases because warehousing and palette management can now clearly display palette receivables and reclamations. At the same time, detailed reports of stock movements help minimize capital commitments due to excessively high inventory. The company has redefined stock minimums, replenishment times, production batches, etc. as a result. As part of the production data acquisition, users can quickly identify machine downtime and plan further steps. Users can track quantities and times for specific production lines to continually align current performance to targets and, if necessary, take further action. The integrated subsidiary sales data provides a clear, complete overview of end clients and current margins for optimal sales policies. The company can recognize high-risk customers, even in international subsidiaries, by evaluating payment behavior in accounts receivable. Users conduct central order, delivery, and primary production planning based on the sales forecast.
“Although we rarely need it, the service from Bissantz is truly outstanding. Out of all our software, Bissantz offers the best support by far.”
Dietmar Quatember, Salinen Austria
DeltaMaster generates added value
The joint project team appreciates the added value that DeltaMaster generates. “We can map many topics by integrating data from various departments in a single data model,” explains Dietmar Quatember, IT Director at Salinen Austria. “This has helped us identify and eliminate inconsistencies in our source systems. We now spend much less time on much better reporting and have increased the precision of individual planning processes,” added Eva Waldl, Head of Management Accounting.
Highlights
- Price and volume forecasts
- Highly granular analysis (down to individual postings)
- Data-driven cost center planning
- Automatically generated P&L statements
- Detailed downtime analyses for production management
- Multicurrency support
- Microsoft SQL Server/Analysis Services
Salinen Austria AG
- Austria’s leading manufacturer of salt products
- Annual production exceeds 1.1 million tons
- with around 470 employees, the Salinen Group generates sales of around EUR 130 million
What our sales controlling 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
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David Harms, Head of Procurement and Controlling, Motea GmbH
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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
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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,