Storytel, a novel approach to finance

Storytel wanted to make its financial planning and analysis (FP&A) process more efficient and accurate. Oscar Lindskogen, Business Controller for the Nordic markets, shares the story of transformation in his own words. The background Storytel previously relied on 25 different Google Sheets templates (one for each market) to perform their quarterly financial forecasts. This data was then consolidated into one master template, which was used for management reporting. The process was time-consuming, prone to errors, and limited their ability to analyse data effectively.

The team wanted to find a way to run a more efficient process that would save time cleaning data and minimise errors since the master template used for consolidating the forecast consisted of many tabs and had long and complicated formulas.

Getting to work in Anaplan

There were three core areas that Storytel initially wanted to work on – markets’ FP&A, global Opex planning and workforce planning. Storytel knew they needed a more robust solution and found their champion in Anaplan, a cloud-based platform designed for collaborative planning. Oscar highlights the importance of ongoing support during implementation, praising Bedford Consulting’s Care Programme for its guidance:

“At first, it felt difficult to make changes in the models, but with Bedford’s support and as time went on, I learnt more about Anaplan and became confident building in the platform.”

Building a better story

The initial focus was replicating Storytel’s existing forecasting templates for each market within Anaplan. This wasn’t just a simple copy-paste job; it was an improvement.

Oscar emphasises how Anaplan addressed the limitations of their old system:

“Once the first phase of the implementation for the FP&A model was complete, we had rebuilt our forecasting templates, but it was even better as we had managed to solve things we were unable to in the past.”

Small things like adding a new product are much simpler, you add a product to a list whereas before, it had to be added manually to multiple forecasting templates. Consequently, there are huge time savings on small tasks.

“We launched multiple new products in the first quarter of 2023, which would have taken a lot of time to find a workaround for in the existing forecasting templates, but we just added the products to a list in Anaplan and it was done.”

Clear improvements observed

The results speak for themselves. Storytel now enjoys:

Faster, more accurate forecasts: Data is readily available, allowing for quicker quarterly forecasts based on actuals. Their first Anaplan forecast was completed just three months after implementation, as Oscar describes: “The Storytel team were able to run their first quarterly forecast in Anaplan during Q1 2023, having started the implementation just three months prior.”

Improved data governance: Gone are the days of multiple spreadsheets and conflicting versions of the truth. Anaplan provides a single source of truth for financial data, as Oscar affirms: “You can rely on the data knowing you have one source of truth, and you feel confident when presenting figures to stakeholders that the numbers are accurate”.

Empowered decision-making: Storytel can now leverage better data and insights for more informed business decisions. Oscar highlights the value: “It’s not just that we replaced what was already built but we built it better, our forecasts are more accurate and that enables us to make better business decisions which is hugely valuable.”

Dynamic reporting: Management reports are readily available, accessible through a central location, and easily customisable. Oscar describes the benefit: “Management reports are utilised across the business to share data and prepare reports for meetings, which is all central within Anaplan, and the reports are dynamic and easy to use.”

The future is bright

Storytel isn’t stopping here. They plan to further refine their workforce planning model and incorporate statistical forecasting into the FP&A model. Storytel’s tale of transformation with Anaplan is a testament to the power of automation and collaboration in financial planning.

To find out more about how Bedford Consulting is supporting customers to optimise planning processes using Anaplan, visit our website here.