SMA Solar

SMA Solar, a leading global specialist in photovoltaic system technology with over 4,000 employees in 20 countries, was faced with the challenge of further developing its existing sales, operational, and financial planning processes. The aim of the project was to design and implement an integrated planning process consisting of sales, operations, and controlling. With the help of an integrated data model, a planning application, and a revised and more automated planning process, regular process durations were to be streamlined and overall forecasting accuracy sustainably improved.

The project began with the development of a common target vision and the definition of corresponding packages of measures to achieve the desired target state. This was to take place across all functions for sales, business units, operations, and finance functions. In the subsequent concept phase, a new target process with meeting structures and governance elements was designed and implemented. Detailed functional concepts were also developed to enable the technical implementation of the integrated planning approach with all relevant interfaces and functional calculation logics. A key success factor of the project was clearly the good cross-functional cooperation between the departments throughout the project. 

As part of project management and control, Horváth supported central project coordination, tracked progress, and documented the results, including for internal management presentations. We were also actively involved in the conceptual development of the new target planning process and its control elements, such as the new sales forecasting process, the BDP board meeting, and the strategic and tactical KPI landscape. Functional requirements and target planning procedures for the system-supported implementation within SAC in the areas of Demand Planning, Operations Planning, and Financial Planning were coordinated and defined. We also illustrated the overall architecture of the planning module and its interfaces with exemplary mock-up calculations of all planning logics, calculation logics, and data transfer points between the functional areas. In the future, clients will be able to evaluate functional conflicts of interest using an integrated financial simulation and thus make decisions from an overall business perspective.