Marica Derenstrand 0:00:02.5: 

Yes, I am Marica Derenstrand, and I am the CFO for Stena Line, and, of course, responsible for the financial planning in Stena Line. I also have my team. I'm not sure where they are. Can you stand up? Yes, it's Jonas Perhage, [?Konor Yervat], and David Tahlin. I think we would never have made this journey without them, so I'm really proud of them, and if you have detailed questions after, ask them. So today, I want to take you on to a story, and I want to give you a story about the system implementation. It's not just a system implementation. It's all about how we changed the way we plan, how we collaborated, and how we plan our future. Yes, first, I want to show you a little bit about Stena Line by showing you a film. It should come here. 

[Marica Derenstrand plays video 0:01:05.3:] 

Marica Derenstrand 0:02:08.5: 

I can see that the figures are not really updated in the film, which I didn't know. We are 8750 employees in total. We run over 40 vessels, and 35,000 trips daily, back and forth. We make sure that 2.2 million freight units and 7.7 million passengers reach their destination every day in a safe way and reliable way. Our revenue is around 20 billion. Since 2003, we had a solid group reporting system for our operational and our statutory reporting, but budget and forecast, they lived in Excel, detailed, manual, and disconnected. So we spent a lot of time producing numbers, but never… We didn't have time to really look at them and to understand them. So we realized we just don't need a new system. We need a new planning process. The old way looked a little bit controlled from distance, but it was really fragile. I mean, many files, complex formulas, and a lot of manual work. If something happened, a broken link, it could stop the whole process. So transparency was limited. Collaboration was hard, and the analysis came last, so we decided it was time to break this pattern and to rethink how we plan. Now, I went back. Let's see. Now, this doesn't work. I wanted to go back, but okay. Okay, before choosing any technology, we looked at ourselves. What did we want, and how should it look like in the future? 

Marica Derenstrand 0:04:22.4: 

So we mapped everything, and we talked to the business, what do you want? What is frustrating you, and what do you want to change to really measure and see how we plan our business forward? All these voices shaped our requirement, and from the beginning, we were really clear, this should not be an IT system or a finance system. This should be a common system for the whole group and for the whole business. We formulated a clear ambition - and I will need to really read this - to replace the old system with a new, common financial planning, reporting, and analysis platform for Stena Line. That was our ambition, and that simple sentence really means a lot of meaning, like common, one platform, and one truth. Financial planning, from budget to forecast to our long-term plan. Reporting and analysis: to really not just collecting data, we need to understand them. We also defined the processes that we wanted to support. I mean, the budget, the forecast, and the long-term plan, but also our operational reporting and our statutory reporting. We asked ourselves if we would start from scratch with every technology that we can find, what would be great for us? So our ambition and vision. Well, we started the project, and we called it Project for Trips. 

Marica Derenstrand 0:06:30.0: 

That was the name. Transparent reporting and integrated planning solution. Our vision was, as you can read there, quite a long sentence. An integrated process, leveraging cognitive capabilities to provide a transparent view of possible scenarios and how targets can be attained through our strategy. A long meaning, but what does that mean? In short, we wanted a planning system to be transparent, intelligent, automated, integrated, flexible, and accessible, and that we also could build scenarios in it. So with this vision, we evaluated a lot of vendors, and we talked to their customers. The decision was to choose Anaplan, and it was anonymous [sic]. Everyone wanted to have this when we saw what you could give us. We saw a platform that could handle the complexity, and to support our driver-based planning, and also to grow with us, and that we could develop it. Just as important, a true partnership, together with the brilliant consultants, Bedford, and also the team from Anaplan. We officially kicked off - it's some years ago now, actually - it was in November 2019 - and we gathered users from the business. Users from finance and all over, and also representatives from Bedford, and also from Anaplan, of course. For me, personally, that day was really special. 

Marica Derenstrand 0:08:17.7: 

It was a lot of energy in the room, and I think I even said that it feels like a horse race, where the horses are standing in the starting block, because everyone wanted to change, and they saw the potential of this system. Then, the world changed. I mean, we started in January 2020, and as you know, the world changed, and the pandemic came, right in the middle of the implementation. It slowed us down. So it took a bit longer time to implement everything, but it also proved why flexibility and rapid replanning are so important for us. We managed to do it. It took longer time, but in 2021, we have already implemented everything. Our business is complex. You don't need to read everything and learn this, but by complexity, doesn't have to reach every user. So we made driver-based planning, and the users, they could concentrate on things that really matters for them, like the volumes, the rates, and the key assumptions. So behind the scenes, Anaplan is doing the allocations, the monthly spreads, and the consolidations. The result of this was less manual work, more time for analysis, and faster and more consistent planning. All of this, the vision, the platform, and the process, is important, but what really matters for us and made a difference is our core values. 

Marica Derenstrand 0:10:16.0: 

At Stena, we talk about three core values: care, innovation, and performance, so let me connect them to this journey. Our capacity and willingness to care in Stena is what we do in everything we do. We have showed care in this project in many ways. We listened to the business. What do you want from us? Support each other: when we had bad times in COVID. Also, to remember that behind every figure, there is a person, a team, or a customer. At Stena, we work together, and this was really a project that proved this. Innovation: well, thinking in new ways is innovation, and we had to rethink how we plan, how we use the data, and also how technology can support us. Innovation, it also means that we have to be curious, asking questions, being open to new perspectives, and change when we need to do it, and seeking knowledge. Our willingness to change and leave all the endless Excel files, that was innovation for us. Then, performance. Of course, if we don't get measurable results, then it's not performance, and also, that we wanted to achieve in Anaplan, to work with the goals that we have. Our most important goals are safety, financial results, customer satisfaction, knowledge, employee satisfaction, and sustainability. 

Marica Derenstrand 0:12:06.4: 

All these goals could be achieved in Anaplan, and they are contributing to these goals, giving us faster and a more reliable financial information, and helping us to simulate with scenario planning, and also freeing up time, so we could develop instead of producing reports. Another really good strength in this project was collaboration. We developed this together. Together with the business, and working as one team. Personally, I have seen how strong this is, actually, because when people feel ownership, they bring ideas. They care, and they also develop, and when a system becomes more than technology, then it becomes shared capacity. So where are we now? I think a lot I heard before here in the presentations is what we are working with, and I saw also potential to work with even more, but… So with Anaplan, we now have a common financial planning, reporting, and analysis platform. Integrated processes, from budget to forecast to long-term plan. More automation and driver-based planning. Better capacity for scenario planning analysis, and that was what we really wanted to achieve from the beginning, so that we have now, but in many ways, this is not the end, of course. It's the beginning. Every planning cycle, every new requirement, every new idea, we need to develop in the system. 

Marica Derenstrand 0:14:07.7: 

Also, we had a lot of regulations and new laws and so on, so the system is really flexible for us to do this, and that is exactly how it should be, right? A system that is living and co-created by the people who is responsible for it. We do it together. Yes, so now we have talked about what we have started and what we have done, but we are doing so much more. We are currently updating the financial planning model from Anaplan Classic to Polaris, which I've heard of before here, to get more visible reporting and also to simplify for our end users. Before the summer, we aim to implement a new model for investments and capital costs, so we can make better decisions in the future, or even better decisions in the future, I should say! We're also starting up a workforce planning module, which you also heard about, and that will really help us to make sure that we have the right resources in the right place at the right time at the right cost. We are also working with Anaplan's AI tool for forecasting, which are called Forecaster. That is really exciting. The first areas in scope is the volumes for freight and for travel, and to predict them, and give us intelligence in the data for the future, and we are not stopping there. We will also continue to put in the long-term plan into Polaris, and see how we can even more make scenarios of that one. 

Marica Derenstrand 0:16:03.2: 

Long-term plan is really important for Stena, because we need to plan our investments, like, 20 years ahead because the vessel last so long, or even longer. So all of these ideas and initiatives share one idea: connecting our data and our processes and our people, so we can make better decisions and faster decisions. So the main takeaways. Looking at this broader roadmap that we are currently doing, Anaplan Polaris, simplified reports, capital cost and investments, workforce planning, Forecaster, and the long-term plan. These are our models and our platform, and we developed them together. This is not an IT system or a finance system. It's our system in the group with the whole business. So when people feel ownership across the whole journey, they don't just accept change, they drive it. I want to close this with a simple message. Whatever you are in finance, operations, IT, or any other part of the business, be curious. Ask how data and the planning can help you to make better decisions. Be bold. Challenge old ways of doing it, because maybe you don't need to do it as you have done before. Be collaborative. Remember that we do it together, and the best solutions are when you are having a team to do it. Our journey, from spreadsheets to smart planning, is not unique to Stena Line, but the way we do it, with care, innovation, and performance, that is our signature. So thank you.