Stockmann has been working purposefully for a longer period to renew its strategy and strengthen the group’s long-term competitiveness. As part of this effort, with a focus on improving profitability, Stockmann found itself in 2020 in a situation where it needed additional resources within financial administrative projects.

NIS has now supported Stockmann for a couple of years in various roles within the finance function. When the collaboration began, the main objective was to harmonize working methods within the finance function and to establish a rolling forecast over a longer time horizon. “We have had a broad collaboration, supporting daily operations and organizational changes, as well as contributing to the development of forecasting models and their follow-up. Stockmann has in many ways been in a transformation phase, and we have been able to contribute to the development of working methods within the finance function,” says Jussi Loponen from NIS.

A central part of this development work was the Anaplan project, where NIS acted as project manager. Anaplan is a cloud-based business planning tool that provides data for decision-making. The project was initiated based on an identified need for more flexible and transparent financial planning. In Anaplan, a rolling forecast model for the income statement was built, where forecasts for revenue and margins played a particularly important role.

Stockmann has been especially satisfied with NIS’s contribution to the Anaplan project, as during a period of change it had been difficult to allocate internal resources to the project. An external project manager therefore proved to be an effective solution. The NIS consultant initially worked for six months as part of the Business Controlling team, and then continued in the role of project manager with responsibility for project planning, follow-up, system implementation, and training of approximately 100 new users.

“From our perspective, the biggest advantage of choosing Laura as project manager was that she already had a good understanding of our existing processes and ways of working, and could use that knowledge in both the planning and implementation phases. This reduced friction in the introduction of the new tool, as we did not need to make extensive changes to our ways of working, but rather consolidate them into a common platform to gain an overall picture,” says Andres Alango from Stockmann.

“Stockmann has a fantastic corporate culture, and it has been very enjoyable to work as part of this organization, which is celebrating its 160th anniversary this year. Despite the company’s long history, it has been inspiring to see how strong the interest is in adopting new technology and how well the new system has been received by employees,” says Laura Nilsson from NIS.

In summary, Stockmann has been very satisfied with the collaboration with NIS. “We would especially like to highlight the structured and systematic approach, as well as the continuous communication, which ensured that we always had good visibility into the project’s progress, challenges, and costs,” says Andres Alango from Stockmann. Going forward, Stockmann now has the opportunity to further develop the system internally and update forecasting modules as business needs evolve.

As a result of the successful collaboration, NIS consultants have continued to support Stockmann’s finance team even after the project’s completion. We look forward to continuing the successful cooperation in the future!