Concept and implementation of a multi-national project planning, forecasting, consolidation and reporting tool using BW-IP

Siemens Gamesa Renewable’s business is pure project business and depends significantly on the quality of project planning and project controlling. The change in the market in recent years has necessitated significant changes in the corporate structure and organisation. Among other things, regional structures were established for sales and project implementation. The existing tool landscape for planning and reporting lagged behind these changes: there was a fragmented and Excel-based tool landscape, the commercial project managers spent valuable productive time collecting data and the planning quality as well as the reliability of the figures at management level left much to be desired. PIKON Deutschland AG used this complex initial situation to create an elegant solution for project planning and controlling together with the client.

About “Siemens Gamesa Renewable”

Siemens Gamesa Renewable produce highly efficient and robust wind turbines for onshore, offshore and coastal wind farms.

Initial Situation

Following a period of rapid expansion, Siemens Gamesa Renewable found that their existing Excel-based approach to project forecasting and reporting lacked the stability required to deliver accurate, timely information for financial reporting. When it came to the monthly rolling forecast, Commercial Project Managers (CPMs) were spending too much time acting as “information gatherers”, reducing the amount of time available to actually manage their project(s).

Solution

Together with our partner, FAS, PIKON developed a project forecasting and reporting concept to allow Siemens to financially forecast and control small- to large-scale projects which often span a number of Siemens Wind Power entities around the globe. PIKON was also responsible for the implementation in SAP Business Warehouse (BW). Utilising the capabilities of BW Integrated Planning (BW-IP), we developed an application which:

Extracted overall project plan and actual values from various SAP ERP systems
Integrated with the Siemens Gamesa Renewable production forecasting tool
Enabled CPMs to perform their rolling project forecast, with the assistance of automatic distribution functions
Delivered project financial reports, which also included automatic currency and project consolidation for those projects where more than one Siemens entity was involved

During the course of the project, PIKON performed the following tasks:

Analysis and optimisation of the current planning & controlling processes
Identification of KPIs and required source data
Creation of a business and technical blueprint for implementation
Complete data & process modelling (inc. custom extractors, data flow)
Technical implementation of BW-IP functions (e.g. distribution functions)
BEx Analyzer & Web Report Creation
Integration Testing
End-user training
User Acceptance Testing support
Go-live and post-go-live support
Ongoing support and maintenance (e.g. change requests, end-user support)
Evaluation of a potential BW-on-HANA migration
Handover to the internal IT organisation

The Benefit for Siemens

A standardised catalogue of key figures and standardised structures increase comprehensibility, transparency, acceptance and comparability of the financial results.
Compared to the previously existing reporting, the information content has been greatly increased. For example, customer- or market-specific evaluations are now easily possible.
In addition to the current forecasts, past forecasts, sales cost estimates, etc. are also available for reporting in a standardised form in one tool. This enables consistent controlling over the entire project life cycle and coherent statements on changes over time, e.g. erosion of margins.
The integrated planning and reporting solution provides the necessary KPIs to measure the achievement of management objectives down to the level of individual projects.
The solution contributes to the fulfilment of internal and external obligations (e.g. risk management, audit-relevant project information) through a standardised, IT-based process.
The tool allows project managers to spend more time on the truly value-added planning and controlling activities, as error-prone and frustrating manual data entry and processing activities have been replaced by automated data loading and preparation.