BRITA Group and BOARD: a winning combination!

BOARD ensures a clear view of data for the controllers of the BRITA water filtration experts. The family owned company based in Taunusstein is the only truly global provider in the field of drinking water optimization with subsidiaries, partners and affiliates on all five continents.

A central reporting, analysis and planning solution is being implemented for fast and automated generation of the monthly financial statements of the entire group. Highlights of the new solution are, for example, management consolidation, currency conversions of flow and stock sizes for e.g. income statement or balanace sheet, as well as interim profits elimination. BRITA chose BOARD because of its performance, flexibility and self-service capabilities: the multidimensional database integrated in BOARD offers highest flexibility in the data modeling combined with the ability to handle large volumes of data. Due to the programming free toolkit approach and intuitive usability for business end users, the development of individual applications is easily possible.

In conjunction with partner noventum Consulting, BOARD ensures the smooth replacement of legacy system MIS Alea which was limited with regard to capacity, flexibility and sustainability. The application creation is a step by step process  parallel to the implementation of a Microsoft SQL Server-based data warehouse (DWH) in which SAP and non SAP data is being gradually transferred by relevent topic area. Write back capabilities for manual entries in the monthly closing process ensure the data flow from BOARD to the DWH and on to SAP.

Parallel to the project BRITA’s core project team is being trained in BOARD in a coaching approach. Therefore the group will be able to independently train and educate approximately 140 future BOARD users and keep on developing the solution without the need for external consulting.  

“For the planned cross-country use and the associated time zone and parallel data access, we sought a solution with a high performance that could converge data from SAP and other sources. At the same time it should be easy to use and adaptable so that users in different departments can utilize the information they need idependently,” said Elmar Duba, Director Group Controlling at BRITA. “With BOARD we have found the ideal tool to optimize our decision making as well as noticeably relieve the IT department” .