Olivier Hernandez 0:00:08.9: 

Good afternoon. My name is Olivier Hernandez. I am responsible in CM for the group controlling and the financial systems. I joined CM five years ago after spending 20 years in Bpost - or I think now it's Bnote, it's called. I had two missions when I was hired. First one was to put into place a strong controlling methodology, and second is to further digitalize all financial processes inside the organization; and I can tell you it's a complex organization. In MC - or CM, whatever you name, in the French speaking is Mutualité Chrétienne and then CM is the Chrétienne Mutualité - we have one vision, one mission; to make sure that healthcare is accessible to everybody with specific tailored products, and to make sure that every person has a quality of life. We are a nonprofit organization and we articulate this mission around three concepts.  

Olivier Hernandez 0:01:12.2:  

The first one is solidarity. The second one is connection. It's important that we connect with our members in a regular way to understand what their problems are. Then the third one is security. We want everybody to feel secure. If I have to wrap up a bit; what is MC/CM? A couple of figures. 1906 is the year we were recognized by the Belgian state. We were existing prior to that already in the 18th century around the churches, but we were really recognized as an entity or as a legal entity in 1906. We have 4.5 million members. This represents 41 per cent of the market share. This year, we have in our budget approximately €30 million of investment in digitalization. We have 8000 collaborators, and next to that, I think we have around 5000 volunteers who are helping us in realizing our missions. In our systems, approximately €15 billion every year go through our systems out of the €38 billion expenses that the state is reimbursing. Unfortunately, this year, the state has decided to reduce his budget in healthcare expenses with approximately €1 billion, a small billion. I mean, that's where Anaplan is going to help us to try to focus on it.  

Olivier Hernandez 0:02:46.6: 

We have three types of, let's say, products. It's not really a product; it's more an offering. We have what we call the mandatory insurance. What is it? When you go to the doctor, you pay a certain amount. This amount is partially reimbursed by the state, which is called the Social Security. Well, this goes through our systems. Same way, if you are having an accident, you can have a replacement; [unclear words - speaking French 0:03:10.5] it's called. This also goes through our system. So that's the mandatory insurance. The second type of insurance is an extra coverage. It's called complimentary insurance. You pay a little amount to get extra benefit. It should be around €15, €13, sometimes depending on the mutuality a little bit higher, and with that you get extra benefit. You can get reimbursement from your kids going to training in the summer or summer camps and so on. You can get reimbursement from doing sports, going to the sports room, I mean, all these kinds of things, it's an extra coverage. Then the last one is more the commercial insurance. It's the hospitality and the dental insurance.  

Olivier Hernandez 0:04:03.0: 

So these are the three types of projects, but we are much more than that. We want to move from, what I would call a solidarity fund, just doing reimbursement, to really a health fund. That's why we have more than 80 nonprofit organizations - it's called [unclear words - speaking French 0:04:21.8] in Belgium - that take care of different activities. [?Cazaux 0:04:26.5] takes care of holidays for young children, same as [?Ocarina 0:04:31.4]. [?Alteo 0:04:32.6] takes care of elderly people, of disabled people. I mean, it's the whole macrocosm of entities that support us in becoming more a health fund than just a reimbursement company.  

Olivier Hernandez 0:04:48.3: 

So I joined in 2022. 2022 was a big change inside CM because it was the year of the merger. We were originally 18 small entities - [unclear words - speaking French 0:05:03.1]. The Dutch speaking one, they all were absorbed by Antwerp, becoming the Chrétienne Mutualité. Then the eight French speaking and Dutch speaking were all absorbed by [?Namur 0:05:14.5], becoming the Mutualité Chrétienne, and we took the opportunity to create as well as a shared service center, centralizing finance, HR, facilities, ICT, and BI, and also some corporate activities with the President, the Vice President, and all the legal stuff. This was a very important step. I mean, it was a big change because it was 19 board directors, it was 18 teams. I mean, everything has changed at that time. So remember, my first mission was to put in place a strong controlling methodology - and that's where we started. We started thinking, I did two budget first without tool. So, Excel. Which one is correct? Is it this one? Is it the last one? Is it the other one? I mean, we didn't know what was the truth.  

Olivier Hernandez 0:06:12.9: 

So that's where we decided, okay, let's go and search for a tool that would allow us to do that properly, and that's where we started with the search for an EPM tool. Unfortunately, we are a publicly compensated company; so we have some rules. We have a strong public tender process, and it took us approximately six months in the start of the process to the approval. Okay, so be it. So we opted and we started the implementation in January 2024, where the first thing we implemented was the reporting module. It took us approximately four to five months. Then September, we started our budgeting process, in parallel with Excel, just to create the trust that the system was working properly, that it was giving the right information. Then in March 2025, we implemented a rolling forecast methodology. Then this year, we did our three-year budget and also implemented a cost allocation model. I will touch upon that a bit later.  

Olivier Hernandez 0:07:43.9: 

Unlike my predecessor - sorry, for me it's only green, it's only finance, sorry about it. So the first thing we implemented in the honeycomb was one centralized reporting hub mixing ERP data, so financial data, with payroll data. I told you; we have 8000 collaborators. It's 80 per cent of our cost. So the focus for us was really, how can we make sure that we keep the payroll cost in line with the budget? That's where we really managed to mix data from the ERP and data coming from our payroll system. So that's the first part of the honeycomb. Then we built payroll planning, which means somebody from the business has to enter his budget. The only thing he has to do is go through his team, say, yes, this person will be present during the whole year, or no, she will take pregnancy leave or so on. It just manages that. He can add some [unclear words - speaking French 0:08:47.1] also for new people if it's needed, and the system will directly calculate the impact on his payroll. So very, very limited impact in terms of how does this translate in finance. Basic stuff.  

Olivier Hernandez 0:09:02.2: 

Then we managed also to develop the 20 per cent remaining, the OpEx, and then a very important thing is the cost allocation model. What is it? So remember we have a shared service center. The shared service center has to be compensated. It means we have to allocate our costs. What did we build there? We built an activity-based costing model using drivers, unit prices. Every year we review that during the budget exercise. Then the supplier and the customer. Finance meets with CM and says, I'm going to do so much accounting for you. It's going to be eight FTE, and FTE is so much. Or facilities says, I have so many pages that I have to print for you or to digitalize. Okay, a page is half a cent, let's do the calculation. So it's a complete cost allocation model. Then what we are currently building is a cost analysis throughout the processes in the organization. Just quickly, we have CM, we have MC, but the processes of creating a member in our systems, it's standard throughout the organization. So we are starting to analyze the cost and check, is it done in a more productive way in CM or in MC? Why? Why is it better there or simpler? So it's completely reviewing the process and putting some cost next to the process.  

Olivier Hernandez 0:10:43.0: 

How were we before Anaplan? So our reporting and analytics, a lot of manual reports, a lot of spreadsheets everywhere. We did not even know what was the last version of the reality. Workforce planning really fragmented in Excel, in an old system which has been decommissioned currently, so not there anymore. Performance management; really limited. Challenging; really limited. Scenario planning; difficult. If you have so many spreadsheets; how can you do scenario planning? The cost allocation was really simple. I mean it was just, okay, one FTE, I transfer you this person, I transfer you the budget. Now, thanks to Anaplan, we have real-time dashboarding. We do the closing. Within the hour, the controlling community has access to his data. Workforce planning, we have complete analysis from payroll costs by individual. We can really say, okay, it's this department that has gone over his budget or this one is the best one. It's fully automatic.  

Olivier Hernandez 0:12:00.8: 

We can now have a framework of performance management, which is standard. We have one version of the truth. At least we can do some scenario modeling. I mean, 80 per cent of payroll costs, 1 per cent of index, 2 per cent of index has a huge impact on our cost. So we can really, every year, do simulations. If it shifts for six months, how much will we win? Really important. Then now, our costing model is completely allocated. We have discussion no more on, how does the model work, but it's really on the driver and the cost of the driver. What did we win? One version of the truth. A lot of spreadsheets. Now we have one system where everybody connects. Our forecast accuracy has improved by 15%, 1 per cent of improvement is €5 million. So you can really improve and improve the quality of your system. Then instead of a budget cycle with what we've learned this year, we ambition to reduce it with 30 per cent, with one month next year, which is for an organization like CM, a huge, huge change, but I'm confident we're going to make it.  

Olivier Hernandez 0:13:25.0: 

What did we learn? Data is important. Data is the most important thing. You should have clean data to create the trust within your entity. The data is the best. Start small. Do not try to make everything at once. Start with - I mean, in our case, we started with reporting and then gradually expand with the use case. Don't do like we did. Do not lift and shift your Excels, like they are. It's creating a complex environment, and then unfortunately you have to do some rework afterwards because you don't use all the capabilities of the system. Change management is important. For some departments, we had to pull them in the system. After using it, after one or two planning processes, they realized the added value. Maybe a hint for Anaplan; sometimes visualization is not at its best. So if we could find some way that it can connect to other tools. It can connect to [unclear words 0:14:38.3] for more visualization. That's great, but make sure you keep the planning model in your hands and govern it in your department. Do not leave that open. Then as I said, iterate. We did mistakes. Like every kid, we do mistakes. We learn and we continue. So that's the ambition.  

Olivier Hernandez 0:15:02.3: 

What's on our plate for the next years? Remember I said we have €30 million investments in digitalization? Yes, all these projects are profitable, which means there are business cases, there are savings. We need to be able to follow these savings. That's why we need to build a project portfolio management model that will help us doing what's coming in terms of cost impact, FTE reduction maybe, or cost improvement, and also to follow that through the organization. Our ICT cost allocation model can be complex. We also want to demystify that and put that in a system and then increase our footprint with the non-mandatory insurance in the system. That's something we want to aim at for, hopefully, 2026.