A Finnish retailer Stockmann has been reforming their strategy and enhancing long-term competitiveness of the group. During the last few years, NIS has been supporting the company in various finance projects. When the cooperation started, the main goal was to harmonize finance practices and to achieve a long-term rolling forecast. "We have been collaborating widely, helping with the day-to-day operations and reorganization, as well as developing and monitoring forecasting models. Stockmann has been in the middle of transformation in many ways, and we have been able to be part of it in developing their financial models", says Jussi Loponen from NIS.
A major part of this finance transformation was the Anaplan project, where NIS played the role of a project manager. Anaplan is a cloud-based business planning tool that provides data for decision-making. The project started after Stockmann had identified a need for more flexible and transparent financial planning.
Therefore, an outsourced project manager was an effective solution for this case. Our NIS consultant, Laura Nilsson, started as a part of the business controlling team for the first six months, after which she continued in the role of a project manager, responsible for project planning, status monitoring, system roll-out and system handover for around 100 new users.
"From our perspective, the key benefit of choosing Laura as the project manager was that she already understood the current processes and was able to use this knowledge in the design and implementation phases of the project. We didn't need to make major changes to the functions or processes, but rather consolidate them into one platform to get the whole picture", says Andres Alango from Stockmann.
"Stockmann has a wonderful company culture, and it has been great to work as a part of an organization that celebrates its 160th anniversary this year. Even though the company is quite mature, it has been exciting to see the enthusiasm and curiosity for new technologies among the employees", says Laura Nilsson from NIS.
Overall, Stockmann has been very satisfied with the cooperation with NIS. "We especially appreciate the clear and systematic working approach and consistent communication, which allowed us to stay informed about the progress, the challenges encountered and the costs of the project", says Andres Alango from Stockmann. In the future, Stockmann will be able to develop the system internally and update the forecasting modules as the business evolves.
As a result of the effective cooperation, NIS has continued to support the finance team at
Stockmann. We hope that our great partnership will continue in the future!