What customers say about Valsight
Controlling and finance leaders at large corporates and mid-sized companies describe what changed in their planning with Valsight.
Large corporates, mid-sized companies and public-sector organisations plan and simulate with Valsight: Mercedes-Benz, Siemens, Commerzbank, DATEV, Volkswagen, Sartorius, BLANCO and others. The tasks differ widely, from strategic five-year planning through workforce planning and the budget process to ad-hoc simulation when tariffs change. The starting point is almost always the same: assumptions change faster than planning can keep up.
What changes in planning
- Speed
- Iterations with top management take days instead of weeks. Scenarios calculate in seconds instead of a working day.
- Responsiveness
- When tariffs, regulation or geopolitics overturn the assumptions, the simulation model is already there. It does not have to be built first.
- Transparency
- Every number can be traced back: which assumption led through which driver to which result, right down to the operational KPIs.
- Independence from IT
- The models are built by controlling itself and adjusted there, in some cases for years without external developers.
Who uses Valsight for what
| Company | Use case | What changed |
|---|---|---|
| Mercedes-Benz AG | Forecasting and ad-hoc simulation alongside group planning | Two to three iterations with top management in one week instead of several |
| Siemens AG | Strategic five-year plan, complete P&L simulated | Assumptions changed and decided live in the management meeting |
| Commerzbank | Group-wide driver-based planning with scenario simulation | Implications of short-notice changes calculated in very little time |
| Siemens Healthineers | Product business plans, budget process, macroeconomic ad-hoc simulation | The effects of measures are simulated immediately in the management team |
| DATEV | Driver-based scenario simulation in the controlling tool stack | Fluctuations and transformation risks become modellable and manageable |
| Siemens Smart Infrastructure | Strategic workforce planning for Siemens SI Germany | Top-down simulation as the basis for bottom-up planning, model built only once |
| BLANCO | Driver-based planning with a shared understanding of the model | Scenarios in seconds instead of a day, realistic targets ultimately exceeded |
| Sartorius | Ambition setting and frontloading in the planning process | Traceable which assumption leads through which driver to which target value |
| Volkswagen | Integrated driver-based planning | Less false precision, faster planning |
| Leipziger Verkehrsbetriebe | Focused planning process with self-built driver trees | Driver trees created and adjusted quickly across numerous dimensions |
Mercedes-Benz runs scenarios in a week instead of over several weeks
Gerhard Schnitzler is Product Owner of the FCOS team at Mercedes-Benz AG, which describes itself as the operating system for the finance function. Valsight has run there for several years alongside the established group planning processes, focused on forecasting and ad-hoc simulation.
Even two or three iterations with top management can be handled with Valsight within a week. Those were processes that used to take several weeks.
For several years we have developed our projects and use cases entirely without external developers. That is quite rare. It works very well for us, we implement very quickly and stay very flexible.
When something unforeseen comes up, geopolitical topics and trends, you can use an established simulation setup to assess those new realities financially and be able to speak to them very quickly.
Siemens Factory Automation simulates the complete P&L
Laura Lang works in performance controlling for the Factory Automation business unit at Siemens AG. Her team models the strategic financial plan there, an annual five-year plan in which the complete profit and loss statement is simulated. The previous process ran on laborious and error-prone Excel models.
We discuss live, we change assumptions live, we look at the cause-and-effect relationships, and our management then decides which scenario we continue to simulate with.
A very big advantage of Valsight is definitely that we can automate regular, recurring processes, and do so relatively quickly and easily, without needing serious programming skills.
In volatile times like the ones we are living through, an automated tool such as Valsight is in my view indispensable.
Commerzbank recalculates plan changes under time pressure
Commerzbank restructured its planning process and introduced group-wide driver-based planning. Regulatory changes and short-term market swings force the bank to adjust plans at very short notice and to calculate complex multivariate scenarios.
We faced the need to restructure the planning process. Not only the market swings caused by the pandemic, but also regulatory changes put us in a position where plans had to be adjusted at very short notice. Valsight put us in a position to calculate the resulting implications in very little time. That gains us a great, great deal of time.
In times of high volatility, we are able to react quickly to changing market conditions and other challenges. Thanks to Valsight.
Siemens Healthineers simulates product plans, budget and tariff scenarios
Stephan Pierer heads the service business at Siemens Healthineers as commercial director. Valsight is used in three areas there: product business plans that drive investment decisions, scenarios for the traditional budget process, and ad-hoc simulation when macroeconomic conditions change, most recently the US tariff situation.
The number of external events and their speed has increased enormously. That is why you have to think more spontaneously when it comes to planning. The software provides the flexibility to react within the plan.
In terms of transparency, what matters most to us is linking financial reporting with the operational KPIs we use to steer the company and the business. Mapping those relationships through value models is a very important factor.
Valsight is the perfect foundation for agile controlling.
We are almost a customer from day one, nine years on board.
Every unit in the group has a different use case. Some do it for production planning, others for R&D, others for simulating macroeconomic change.
DATEV makes the risks of transformation manageable
Gesa Merensky heads pricing, costing and business intelligence at DATEV. Driver-based scenario simulation is an established part of the controlling tool stack there, used to steer the transformation of the business model.
Valsight is an important part of our controlling tool stack. We can model and manage the fluctuations of the VUCA world and the risks of transformation through driver-based scenario simulations.
Methods such as driver-based scenario simulation are what first make possible the view of the data you need in order to genuinely steer a transformation of business models. Conventional methods run into their limits there.
Siemens Smart Infrastructure plans workforce needs several steps ahead
As a business excellence consultant, Liudmila Trifonova models strategic workforce planning for Siemens SI in Germany. The organisation consists of several business units, each structured differently. Planning previously lived in Excel and was correspondingly hard to follow. The results of the top-down simulation now serve as orientation for bottom-up planning.
Using Valsight was a real game changer, and I think many stakeholders would confirm that.
In strategic workforce planning we model the whole of SI Germany. That is why transparency is the most important point in the entire plan. We want to know what is happening at every point in our organisation.
We do not just want to identify the immediate need in the business, we want to think several steps ahead, so that we know exactly what happens to our workforce requirement when our revenue growth increases.
BLANCO replaces silent departmental buffers with shared, ambitious targets
As managing director, Matthias von Daacke heads global controlling at BLANCO. Method and tool together raised transparency over the driver model far enough that every part of the business works from the same understanding of it.
We calculated scenarios in fractions of a second where people used to withdraw for a day to do that work. That was one of our biggest gains and massively increased acceptance of the driver-based approach.
Instead of quietly building in departmental buffers, as is so often the case, every side brought realistic targets at an ambitious level. And in the end they were even exceeded.
Sartorius raises the quality of the discussion in ambition setting
Malte Horstmannshoff runs projects to digitalise and automate finance processes in central controlling at Sartorius. The company is redesigning its planning systems and introducing a frontloading and ambition-setting process in which top management works towards target values on the basis of a projection.
At any time you can see what the drivers and the relationships between them, the cause-and-effect relationships for your own business model, actually are. That is an enormous advantage, and it raises the quality of the discussion in particular.
The biggest asset from my point of view is that it is always clear which assumptions I made that led to this target value, which driver I turned, and what effect that had on my entire KPI system.
Volkswagen avoids false precision and gets faster
Julian Höfers heads integrated planning at Volkswagen. The driver-based approach replaces a level of detail that suggests a precision the underlying assumptions cannot support.
With Valsight we avoid false precision and become faster.
Leipziger Verkehrsbetriebe build their own driver trees
Uwe Pohlers heads group controlling at Leipziger Verkehrsbetriebe. The driver models are built in the business function itself and adjusted there when needed, without a detour through IT.
As a user, I can quickly create driver trees across numerous dimensions and adjust them as needed to enable a targeted planning process.
Quotes translated from German. The video interviews are in German.
More from the customer perspective
Detailed project write-ups with starting point, approach and results are in the customer success stories. Background on the methods mentioned here is in the insights and the glossary.