More transparency and better planning for Hafen Wien GmbH
The Port of Vienna is not only the largest public port on the Danube in Austria, it's also the country's biggest trimodal logistics centre. It links the Black Sea, 2,000 kilometres away, and the North Sea, 1,500 kilometres away, by water, rail and road. Goods and commodities of all kinds are transported here, stored in containers, traded and managed. The owner of the port facilities, which cover an area of around three million square metres, is Hafen Wien GmbH, a company belonging to Wien Holding and the Vienna Economic Chamber. The company runs the business operations of the three cargo ports of Freudenau, Albern and Lobau, and does so using the Corporate Planning software.
Planning with Excel acrobatics
Hafen Wien GmbH draws up its annual plan based on the targets set in the Wien Holding budget. For a long time, this was done using Microsoft Excel. The problem there was that modelling the corporate structures and the annual plan of the individual business units was a confusing and lengthy process, as every cost centre had to be entered in a separate tab. There was a lack of overview and transparency. Collaboration between the various divisions was difficult. Added to that was the time-consuming manual editing involved.
Time for a change
To be able to drive its multifunctional service operations efficiently into the future, conserve resources and create transparency, Hafen Wien GmbH decided to set a new course in 2020. Central to this was the implementation of modern technology for better integration and greater automation to speed up processes and improve the quality of decisions.
Greater clarity and flexibility
The Corporate Planning software doesn't just support Hafen Wien GmbH by offering better usability, it also processes all relevant data from the source systems, enables operational budgets to be integrated and provides the tools for automated projections and forecasts. "With the Corporate Planning software, we can now plan with our ERP and logistics data in real time and create reports that are updated every day. We're able to make precise assumptions about the future and use scenarios for decision-making," explains Mark Miller, Head of Finance and Strategy at Hafen Wien GmbH. "We particularly appreciate the tree structure, which arranges our data into a hierarchy, making it possible for us to model our business units and cost centres clearly and flexibly. We can quickly and easily create and format automated reports to suit our needs. We can adapt or extend our data evaluations exactly as we like."
Efficient processes for better results
The introduction of the Corporate Planning software has led to the planning process at Hafen Wien GmbH becoming significantly more efficient. The self-explanatory layout of the user interface meant that the software could be used straight away without any training. Since the current data from all business units is merged automatically, the workload has been greatly reduced. The routine manual tasks and the tricky data integration from the days of Excel have been consigned to history, as have the associated inconsistencies. "Our planning process, as a whole, has become much shorter," Mark Miller sums up. "Thanks to the Corporate Planning software, we can now plan more reliably and react more quickly to market developments."
About Hafen Wien GmbH
Hafen Wien GmbH is a company belonging to Wien Holding with 5% held by the Vienna Economic Chamber (Wirtschaftskammer Wien). It is the owner of the port facilities covering roughly three million square metres, consisting of real estate, buildings and quay installations, where it operates three major cargo terminals and their associated infrastructure: the Freudenau harbour, the Albern harbour and the Lobau oil terminal. These three cargo terminals handle around 1,200 freighters per year. The Danube is used in particular for transporting mineral oil products, road salt, building materials such as cement, sand or steel products, and agricultural products such as grain and synthetic fertilizers.
