InfoSuite has made it much easier for the Plantorama centre managers to budget for the stores. And the company CFO has gained a better overview of the budgeting process.
Until Plantorama in 2020 implemented InfoSuite, they used spreadsheets for budgeting.
With sales, cost, and salary budget for each of the 11 garden centres, the company budgeting is a complex process, involving the stores, management, and the finance department.
The Plantorama budgeting is thus defined by many budgets and numerous different budget typists. That made it difficult for Plantorama’s CFO, Torben Castenskiold, to maintain the overview of the spreadsheet budgeting.
”We had in the area of 50 different Excel budget sheets divided between our centre managers and the head office. That made it very difficult to maintain the overview. Until the budget sheets were handed over to entry, we did have the overview, but when they were returned, it was hard to assess whether the figures were correct,” Torben Castenskiold says.
With InfoSuite, Torben Castenskiold no longer needs to keep track of the numerous spreadsheets. The entire budget model is now gathered in one platform in a coherent process, where the figures automatically are transferred between sub-budgets and then consolidated.
A flexible and simple budgeting solution
The need for an easier and more simple budgeting process made Plantorama look for a dedicated budgeting solution. They chose InfoSuite for one particular reason.
”We had five different solutions to choose from. The overriding reason for choosing InfoSuite was the opportunity to customise the solution to make it match our way of budgeting,” Torben Castenskiold says.
The user interface of Plantorama allows the centre managers to enter their budgets very similar to how they used to.
”And it is important to include the users in the process. If it is difficult for them, we get off to a bad start when the budgeting process begins. Our centre managers come with very different backgrounds for budgeting. They are gardeners, retailers, and professionals from hardware stores, so the system must be easy applicable at more levels,” Torben Castenskiold explains.
Smooth implementation and good teamwork
Plantorama operates with a focused budgeting process where large parts of setting the future budgets is carried out at a workshop. It was essential for Plantorama that InfoSuite was implemented technically and organisationally prior to the first workshop – and it was.
”The entire implementation process has run smoothly, and the cooperation with the consultants assigned has worked perfectly. We had a great teamwork with InfoSuite, who supported what we wanted and where we wanted to go.”
In this way, Plantorama got the InfoSuite budgeting solution safely up and running – and the outcome cannot be denied.
”InfoSuite has given us a shorter budgeting process. And it will for sure be more accurate. Given that entry is easier, we can spend time improving the quality of the budgets,” Torben Castenskiold ends.
About Plantorama
The Danish family business Plantorama opened its first garden centre in 1987. Since then, 10 more have opened across the country. This makes Plantorama the largest garden and pet centre in Denmark. Since 2020, Plantorama has been a customer of InfoSuite.
About the Plantorama InfoSuite solution:
In the Plantorama InfoSuite solution, the management budget plays a main part. The management sets the overall, financial goals for the next year, and the numbers are then automatically allocated to the underlying budgets.
In addition to the management budget, the budgeting solution also includes sales, salary, and cost budgets, and a cash budget has been implemented which automatically retrieves numbers from the ERP system.
The Plantorama InfoSuite solution retrieves and supplies data from and to their NAV platform. Budgets are thus automatically transferred from InfoSuite to Plantorama’s BI solution from Targit.