Socomec energizes decision-making for the future

When electrical equipment maker Socomec operated as a group of independent companies, data was siloed and demand planning was time-consuming. Moving to Anaplan enabled the company to consolidate key data and demand planning processes onto one system, delivering massive time savings in demand planning and enabling growth without additional headcount. Today, 18-month forecasts of financial and production performance are collaborative and accurate, resulting in better decision-making.

Socomec is a century-old company on the leading edge of energy technology. The company provides electrical equipment, switches, meters, and power conversion units to a growing market that is constantly changing. That’s a challenge — particularly for Socomec’s demand planners. “We need to change our planning constantly to adapt to market change, to adapt to trends,” explains Jean-Michel Meyer, Demand Planning Manager at Socomec.

The large projects Socomec often sells into add further complications. “We sometimes are dealing with big opportunities that involve a lot of risk in terms of inventory and capacity,” Meyer explains. “We need to have visibility into the risks and the implications on our inventory and capacity before choosing to pursue an opportunity.”

Socomec had long operated as a group of small, independent companies with siloed, independent business processes. Meyer and his colleagues wanted to bring the entire business onto a single, shared planning platform to address its need for demand planning agility and risk analysis.

Many models, one source of truth

Starting in early 2023, Socomec built and launched an Anaplan solution to support demand planning across the business. The Anaplan platform was chosen for its ease of use and flexibility to cover Socomec’s needs now and into the future. Today, Socomec’s demand planning solution forecasts sales on an 18-month timeframe in both financial (value) and production (quantity) terms.

Meyer and his team have enabled people across the company to work together on the platform. “With Anaplan we have a tool where marketing, finance, supply chain can all connect together and have direct access to the latest validated information,” Meyer explains. “We have one source of truth when it comes to planning data.”

Another Anaplan differentiator for Meyer: the business holds the keys to the platform, not outside consultants. “We have total control of our system,” Meyer says. That includes training three demand planners to be internal model builders who adapt the Anaplan platform to change on the spot.

Speed, efficiency, and better decisions

Using Anaplan, forecasting can address several different sales models at Socomec, including large one-time projects, repetitive business from OEMs and key accounts, and baseline sales to small customers. Key market insights are built into the plan, and the monthly sales forecast integrates risk vs. opportunity calculations (important for large one-time projects), top-down/bottom-up gap closing, and currency exchange rates.

Socomec’s demand planning solution on Anaplan has accelerated key business processes. Preparing for monthly demand planning meetings formerly required three people and took one to two weeks. Now the work is completed in minutes — a 99%+ time savings. The solution has also made day-to-day demand planning more efficient. “Thanks to Anaplan, we were able to cover the demand planning process for an additional business line without additional headcount in the demand planning department,” Meyer notes.

Other business improvements are also enabled with Anaplan. Two primary key performance indicators (KPIs) at Socomec are constantly monitored with the platform: on-time shipping and forecast accuracy. “With Anaplan, we constantly monitor whether we are over-forecasting, which risks generating too much inventory, or under-forecasting, which risks losing opportunities,” Meyer explains.

Accurate forecasts, built collaboratively with integrated data, ultimately drive better decisions. “Anaplan helps improve business performance by sharing all the assumptions across the different stakeholders to take the best decision,” Meyer concludes. “Anaplan helps also to make those decisions in a much faster way.”