February 18, 2008. IBS has produced and automated a budgeting system for ROLF in a project that provided a budget management system supported by the Cognos Planning specialized solution and appropriate for the scale and objectives of the business of ROLF.
ROLF is Russia`s largest importer and retailer of new foreign-made cars. ROLF comprises a number of self-sustained businesses including distribution, retail, automotive service, credit and insurance, spare parts, etc.
ROLF is an industry leader having sustained excellent growth since its foundation. With its organization structure becoming increasingly complicated and its revenues reaching several USD billion, a fundamentally new level of budgeting arrangements was required to ensure business manageability and sustain further growth. Given that ROLF Group is one of Russia’s biggest privately owned businesses operating in a highly competitive market, it was essential for the Group to improve transparency of its financial management, and that was the goal of the project.
During the first phase, which started in the summer of 2006, ROLF Group’s financial department staff and IBS consultants conducted a survey and produced a new budgeting methodology enabling planning, analysis and control of budgets in various aspects including product lines, vendors, business units, lines of business, etc. The new model involved all company units in the planning process – by contrast, previously all budgets were actually made by the planning unit alone.
The methodology and document templates were used as early as November in generating the company budget for 2007. The pilot system was initially configured and tested in the Excel environment. The company’s budget planning processes were changed concurrently with the work to develop the system itself and align the methodology as closely as possible with the real business requirements. The resulting budgeting system formed the groundwork for further automation.
Cognos Planning was selected and implemented as the automation software platform during the first half of 2007. The solution produced on that platform fully supports ROLF’s budgeting model and provides broad capabilities for managing budgeting processes, financial analysis and modeling. The automation project involved all of the Group’s companies located in Moscow and St. Petersburg. The system has some 100 users. The company started using the new system for generating annual and quarterly budgets as early as the second half of 2007.
“Undoubtedly, the budgeting system implementation took us to a new level of managing the company’s finances. The benefits are obvious, including a high level of transparency in budget generation and performance, meaningful distribution of the company’s budget and clearly defined responsibilities for financial indicators because now all of ROLF units, and not just the planning and economics unit, are closely involved in working on the budget. I should note that re-engineering of internal financial planning processes and getting the staff engaged and trained was no easy task but we did it and now have no doubts all those efforts were not in vain. With IBS, we have created a management tool that really works, and we need it for continued successful business growth”, noted Andrey Gunin, Chief Financial Officer, ROLF Group.
Profiles of the companies
ROLF is Russia`s largest importer and retailer of new foreign-made cars. ROLF’s retail portfolio includes brands of the world’s best-known producers such as Mitsubishi, Hyundai, Audi, Ford, Mazda, Peugeot, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Lexus, Volkswagen, Land Rover and Renault.
ROLF Group includes Rolf Import, the exclusive distributor of Mitsubishi Motors in Russia since 1991 and Europe’s biggest distributor of Mitsubishi Motors. Rolf Import sells through a network of about 100 independent dealers in 67 cities covering 93 per cent of the Russian population. Rolf Import imported and sold 100,000 cars in 2007.
ROLF Group is Russia’s only fully diversified automotive business. In addition to the car distribution and retail businesses, the Group includes Rolf Logistics (the biggest operator in the logistics market), Rolf PDC (spare parts and car accessories distribution business), BlueFish (second-hand car distribution business) and Rolf Pronto (a financial services holding company providing lending facilities and insurance).
Forbes has ranked ROLF 15th largest privately owned business in Russia. The company’s turnover was approximately USD 4 billion in 2007.
IBS is Russia’s leading player in the IT and consulting market. It was formed through the merger of IBS and Borlas Consulting Group. It is part of IBS Group Holding Limited, along with Luxoft and Depo Computers. Its core lines of business are management consulting, business applications implementation, IT outsourcing and IT infrastructure. IBS headcount exceeds 3400 employees including over 1500 certified consultants. 84 of Russia’s top 100 companies are customers of IBS.
For further information on IBS please contact Lada Scherbakova, PR Director, telephone: +7 495 967-8080, e-mail: lada@ibs.ru.
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