Alken-Maes brings joy to people through its iconic beer and cider brands, including Cristal, Maes, Mort Subite, and Grimbergen. As the second-largest brewery in Belgium, adapting to shifting market conditions helps Alken-Maes to keep the joy flowing — but in finance, legacy technology sometimes impaired the company’s agility.
“We wanted a smarter and more efficient way of working,” recalls Bianca Seels, Senior Strategic Controller at Alken-Maes. “We were looking for a flexible, integrated tool with scenario-planning capabilities so, at any moment, we would have a good insight into the profitability of different parts of the business. This would help to drive faster decisions and to drive focus.”
Many planning processes, one platform
Seels and her team selected Anaplan for a new financial planning and analysis (FP&A) solution because it was flexible and could integrate with data and systems across many business areas.
“We use Anaplan for different parts of the planning process,” says Seels. “We have the AP [annual plan], we have regular forecasts, we have strategic planning, and we also have some sales and operations planning [S&OP] finance realizations.”
Results available days faster
The FP&A solution that Alken-Maes built on the Anaplan platform enables real-time data analysis, which drives operational efficiency and saves the finance team several days each month. “Anaplan enables a more efficient, transparent, and flexible way of planning,” comments Seels. “The team spends a lot of less hours in calculations, in data crunching, in maintenance, in manual preparations and so on. We can literally say that during an AP [annual plan] or forecasting process that we have the results available a few days earlier. It gives extra time to analyze the results, to calculate different scenarios, to discuss the result with the management team. So, really we can say that we have more time for added-value business partnering and driving better decisions.”
With Anaplan, Alken-Maes has a single, reliable source of financial data for decision-making. “Thanks to Anaplan, our data accuracy has improved a lot compared to the past,” notes Seels. “There's less room for manual errors, and more automation in place which improves the data quality.”
With accurate, real-time financial insights, Alken-Maes can bring more joy to its customers — and also to its finance team. “Anaplan really had a positive impact on myself, but also on the full team,” Seels concludes. “In the past, we suffered from stress levels, longer hours, frustrations. But today, thanks to Anaplan, there really is a significant improvement.”
