SAP announced last week that CKE Restaurants and Freedom Group are two customers streamlining financial forecasting and budgeting processes with the SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation application.
Comprised of restaurant chains such as Carl's Jr. and Hardee's, CKE has more than 3,000 locations worldwide in 43 states and 13 countries. CKE now uses SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation to make decisions that impact its global brands and respond quickly to changing economies and business environments. It previously took CKE days to aggregate data and produce forecasts, and sometimes weeks to consolidate data for the budgeting process. CKE says it can now do all of this in hours, and its budgeting cycle has been reduced by one-third. Additionally, by spending less time consolidating and validating large data sets and more time analyzing information, CKE says it has a complete view of its organisation. Finance team members, for example, can assess the company's profitability while excluding certain factors and more easily gauge how individual marketing campaigns impact revenue.
Freedom Group a designer, manufacturer and marketer of firearms, ammunition and other related products including the Remington brand is using SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation to deliver sales and operations data to its field, which serves the hunting, shooting sports, law enforcement and military markets. By consuming the information in fresh ways, Freedom Group says that the field has gained a new perspective and is better equipped to make business decisions that drive profitability throughout the organisation. Senior management is able to track corporate-wide key performance indicators (KPIs) for shipments, bookings, open orders, production and finished goods inventory to evaluate its different companies in a consistent way. As a result, Freedom Group says it has cut the time it takes to report financials – including period-end closing – by five to 10 days.
