JEDOX SUCCESS STORY · AUTOMOTIVE
Mercedes-Benz moves from 1,000+ spreadsheets to a unified platform
Mercedes-Benz South Africa replaced a fragmented landscape of Excel and PowerPoint reporting with Jedox, implementing it largely on its own within a few weeks. Business Controlling now runs planning, forecasting and reporting on one platform, connected directly to SAP.
1,000+
spreadsheets replaced
A few weeks
to implement
<5 months
to build a contract management module
About Mercedes-Benz South Africa
Mercedes-Benz South Africa (MBSA) is fully owned by Mercedes-Benz Group AG. It supplies premium passenger cars and commercial vehicles, along with tailor-made mobility solutions for individual and fleet customers in South Africa. Its Business Controlling division runs the company’s planning, forecasting and reporting on a single platform connected directly to SAP.
Challenge
A fragmented spreadsheet landscape
Mercedes-Benz South Africa, fully owned by Mercedes-Benz Group AG, supplies premium passenger cars and commercial vehicles. Its reporting and forecasting ran on Microsoft Excel and PowerPoint.
The approach covered the basics but produced a fragmented system of spreadsheets. The process was slow, checking sheets for errors took considerable time, and forecasting and reporting were draining business users, so the Business Controlling division looked for a better solution.
Solution
A largely self-run implementation
After an extensive validation process, the team chose Jedox, whose Excel-integrated platform allowed a smooth transition away from heterogeneous spreadsheets. MBSA implemented Jedox largely independently in only a few weeks, supported by Jedox support and online learning tools, and the finance team then built its own reports, forecasts and dashboards.
IT requirements were low: little more than a server, with IT later providing an independent server and daily backup. Jedox’s built-in SAP connector gave instant, flexible access to SAP data.
Mercedes-Benz moves from 1,000+ spreadsheets to a unified platform
Mercedes-Benz South Africa
Outcome
Over 1,000 spreadsheets replaced
Business Controlling uses Jedox daily for bottom-up planning and forecasting of headcount and costs, monthly actuals reporting, and cost-centre and cost-element reporting. Because the platform is simple for business users and needs almost no IT support, the page reports a high return on investment.
A contract management module was also built in Jedox for around 50 users in the USA in less than five months. It covers project planning, contract creation through an integrated release workflow, status overviews, reports highlighting expiring contracts and a system-controlled approval workflow replacing email. Web-based data entry replaced a four-digit number of Excel sheets, saving cost and time and avoiding transmission errors.
Jedox in use at Mercedes-Benz South Africa
- Planning and forecasting
- Reporting and dashboards
- SAP connector
- Contract management workflow
- Excel integration
Read more Jedox success stories, or find out about Jedox implementation in the UK & Ireland.
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