How a technology group modernized its financial controlling

Success story Toshiba Electronics Europe GmbH

Non-transparent financial data. Opaque processes. Error-prone Excel files. Financial controlling at Toshiba Electronics Europe was anything but efficient and reliable. With LucaNet, the group turned things around.
 

Monthly reporting
50 %

faster

How Toshiba uses LucaNet software:

  • Monthly reporting
  • Deviation analysis
  • Budget planning
ulrich-leib
Financial data that are 90% more transparent – this is our new reality thanks to LucaNet. We see the benefits every day in our finance department. We save on costs, time, and nerves, and now again have complete faith in our financial data.

Ulrich Leib
Head of Controlling

About the enterprise

Founded in 1875. Over 146,000 staff worldwide. Around 45 billion euros in annual sales. These are the impressive figures behind one of the most famous brands in the technology and electronics industry: Toshiba.

Use cases:

logo toshiba

Industry :

Production / Industry

Core Business :

Electrical engineering and electronics

Headquarter city :

Düsseldorf (Germany)

Employees :

146,000

Website :

Toshiba Electronics Europe homepage

The challenge

Excel spreadsheets: a real time sink

Toshiba has been using LucaNet since 2003. That makes the technology group one of LucaNet’s first customers. Ulrich Leib, Head of Controlling at Toshiba Electronics Europe, was a fan right from the start. “Before implementing LucaNet, a three-person team needed five to six days for the monthly reporting”, he recalls. The reason for this was the inefficient manual handling of the data and a time-consuming dispatch process using Excel spreadsheets.

But there was an even bigger problem: the lack of transparency and flexibility of the financial data. Toshiba managers were unable to trace back the accounts and postings that caused major deviations. Instead, they had to laboriously hunt through all the accounts. Reliable control and management of the financial data was impossible under the procedure being used. It was a nightmare for any controller.

toshiba laptop

The solution

90 % greater transparency – meaningful deviation analyses

With LucaNet, this is no longer a problem. Toshiba Electronics now carries out transparent and meaningful deviation analyses. “The most important thing for us is that we can work out the relevant account, cost center, and cost center manager when conducting a deviation analysis”, Ulrich Leib explains. The logging of changes, the ability to add comments on current and planning figures and deviations, and the flexible data layouts also help to provide increased transparency and high-quality data. “With LucaNet, we improved data transparency by 90 %. That’s really unbeatable.”

Budget planning now three times faster

Transparency and efficiency in the planning process also improved significantly, according to Ulrich Leib. “With LucaNet, cost center managers can access information independently and keep tabs on how their budget is progressing, for example.” That saves time: Toshiba Electronics now completes its budget planning three times faster. For the planning of the budgets, for which 40 cost center managers are involved across Europe, the technology group relies on LucaNet’s task management. Tasks remind the cost center managers to enter their data, with the Head of Controlling being able to look at how things are progressing at any time.

 And here’s what keeps the CFO happy: real-time data and interactive analyses

Back to monthly reporting. Thanks to the automation of many steps in financial controlling, the error rate for monthly reporting was able to be cut by nearly 100 percent. While Toshiba Electronics previously needed five to six days for monthly reporting, it can now manage the task in just two to three days. Also helpful is the Excel and BI integration that the LucaNet software offers for planning and reporting purposes. This means that the team always has real-time data to hand that it can then present transparently to the CFO as a basis for decision-making as part of interactive analyses.

 

 

How LucaNet software benefits Toshiba:

  • Budget planning is three times faster
  • Real data transparency
  • More efficient monthly reporting
Monthly reporting
50 %

faster