Green Cargo on the Financial Planning Tool Cumulus BI: “Has Cut our Lead Times”

Many companies struggle with time-consuming administrative processes ranging from follow-up and reporting to budgeting and forecasting. One of these was the logistics company Green Cargo, which realized that working in Excel and manual work was slowing down operations. In their search for an efficient service to create budgets and forecasts and improve financial monitoring, Binovi’s Cumulus BI solution stood out among the options.

– CBI has cut our lead times, but most importantly, the quality of our data has improved from the bottom up,” says Malin Blom, Business Controller at Green Cargo.

Financial planning and follow-up are a time-consuming task for many Swedish companies, which are stuck in old processes with Excel as their main tool. To help companies save time but also develop their businesses, Binovi created Cumulus BI – a service that does not require installation or hardware and gathers all functionality in one place. For Green Cargo, the solution has created a more efficient way of working and a whole new type of visualization.

– CBI has made reporting much easier and we can now get figures out quickly and look at them from different perspectives. The budgeting and forecasting part have been by far the biggest boost. Previously our cost owners used Excel themselves whereas now they can put their own figures directly into the platform and you can see all the figures at the same time. Before CBI, you had figures you could not follow up, so it is a significant improvement,” says Malin Blom at Green Cargo.

Good Overview
Today, just over 100 people at Green Cargo use CBI, and the role-based functionality allows project managers, IT staff and various managers to forecast and follow-up key performance indicators with ease, as the owners of the indicators are clear. Malin Blom sees the ability to have a good overview and to make changes quickly in the system as great advantages.

– It is quite easy to make changes to, for example, the views, how you look at the numbers and what you want to be able to, and not be able to see. The views also give a completely different insight. ‘We work with a three-year budget and previously we could only see year one, whereas now we can see all three and track the change over the years,’ she explains, adding: ‘We can also break down cost by supplier for different IT projects and see costs over time, which makes it easier to see your running costs and make accurate forecasts.

”Better Quality”
One of CBI’s biggest added values is how it helps to improve the quality of data, according to Malin Blom. It contributes to a more detailed way of working.

– As the quality of data improves, the focus can shift to the details. Using Excel, for example, it becomes more of a “big picture” whereas now everything is at account and cost level with its responsible owners. It is also much faster when everything is simultaneously consolidated and goes into the overview view directly,” she concludes.

What Our Customers Are Saying

Cumulus BI has helped us create greater flexibility. It has facilitated the management of currency and made it easier for each unit to get an overall sense of the budget early in the process.

Joakim Alfredsson

CFO, Formpipe

We got a lot of support so it went smooth. They have helped to adapt the service to our needs and requirements. And they are very helpful at short notice. It can even be a completely new development that they solve on the same day.

Anders Rees

CFO, Urbaser

Cumulus BI is more flexible than sending lots of Excel files back and forth and keeping track of who made what changes. Now it is easy for me to check what has been changed.

Jonas Rodling

Director Business Controller, Plantagen