Clyde Bergemann Cuts Forecast Preparation From Days to Minutes With Write!

• Write! enabled a cut in forecast preparation time from days to minutes. 

• The team saw time savings across four forecast and budget cycles per year.  

• Project documentation now is centralized, ending use of 10 different Excel files. 

• No more detective work to go back and dig up the rationale behind the planning numbers.  

Forecast planning at Clyde Bergemann consumed two to three days of manual work, repeated four times per year. That's what it cost the controlling team before implementing Write! from insightsoftware.  The process was predictable and painful: extract data from SAP, format Excel templates, distribute them to cost center managers, wait for responses, consolidate everything. Now cost center managers enter forecasts directly into Qlik dashboards powered by Write! The controlling team sends one email, and the data comes back ready to use.  Beyond forecast planning, the company uses Write! to track project performance through contribution margin analysis with explanatory comments, and to centralize project documentation that previously lived across 10 different Excel files on 10 different file servers.  Clyde Bergemann GmbH (CBW) is part of the Clyde Bergemann Power Group (CBPG), a globally operating group of companies with more than 1,100 employees at 10 locations worldwide. CBPG provides customers in the power and energy industries with new systems and tailor-made solutions, spare parts, and services around installed products. Clyde Bergemann significantly contributes to the optimization of processes and ensures efficient operations and effective energy conversion while reducing CO2 emissions.  

The controlling team at CBW knew their forecast process needed to change. They'd been using Qlik for years. It worked well for reporting. But planning? That was still a manual slog.  Sonja Dirks, Head of Controlling at CBW, can walk through the old process step by step. It’s the kind of detail you remember because you've done something too many times.  “It took us two or three days to collect all the data from our SAP system for the last year and the last few months, then put it all in those nice columns and send it to the colleagues who were supposed to view the data and plan their cost center, get it back and get everything in line again,” Dirks said.   [customer_testimonial] With forecasts running three times per year plus an annual budget phase, the manual Excel-based system created another problem. When forecasts didn't match actuals, understanding why required detective work. Dirks’ team had to dig through multiple files to piece together what changed and when.  The team knew there had to be a better way. So Dirks said they asked, “OK, how can we make our life easier?”  

CBW discovered Write! and recognized something most BI tools don't offer: the ability to capture data directly in dashboards without exporting to Excel.  Once CBW learned what Write! could do for them, they didn’t consider other solutions. “We just heard that there is a possibility to write back in Qlik, and we said, ‘Oh yeah, of course. Let's do it. Go for it,’” Dirks said.  Cost center managers could now access live data in Qlik dashboards, review historical performance, and enter forecasts directly. All without the controlling team spending days collecting and consolidating Excel templates. “They just can use it, and it frees up their time. They can be more productive for other tasks,” Dirks said. “There’s barely any work from our side anymore.”  Write! worked with CBW's existing Qlik setup, adding write back functionality without requiring a system overhaul. That mattered: team members had years of Qlik expertise they wanted to preserve. 

Most companies hand off their implementation to consultants. CBW took a different approach.  CBW implemented Write! with their on-premises Qlik environment by learning the system themselves while getting consultant support where needed.  “We like to have more [control], not going to a consultant and telling them, 'Oh yeah, we want this, please build us something.' But we like to put ourselves in there, so we understand everything,” Dirks explained.   Keeping knowledge in-house meant deeper understanding of the systems. With that experience, building on later became easier. CBW focused initial deployment on forecast and budget planning, then expanded to project performance tracking and documentation.  User training was straightforward: “Once you get a hang of it, it's quite easy to use, and for the end users as well. It's not that complicated,” Dirks said. 

CBW put Write! to work in three ways, each building on the core write back capability.

1. Forecast and Budget Planning

Remember those two to three days of manual work? Here's what that looks like today:  The controlling team used to spend two to three days extracting SAP data, formatting Excel templates, distributing them to cost center managers, and consolidating responses. Today, cost center managers access live data in Qlik dashboards powered by Write! and enter their forecasts directly.  “It's now easier to go back in time to see what the individual people planned versus what the actual figures were,” Dirks said. “We can have an analysis of what our SG&A costs are—selling and admin—or other parts of research and development, and in specific detail, what is our travel cost or maintenance or IT cost.”  The team immediately sees variance drivers. The manual process that consumed days now happens through direct data entry. 

2. Project Performance Tracking With Audit Trails

That time savings opened up possibilities beyond forecasting. Write! enables CBW to track project performance and document the rationale behind financial estimates. This matters particularly for year-end audits. Write! provides an auditable trail of when data was entered, who entered it, and what assumptions drove the valuations. “We value our projects in a specific way, and we have to show them that this is the value of a project—our contribution margin, our estimated contribution margin—and this information will be typed in by our employees with Write!,” Dirks explained. “We can track our information as well and show them, 'Yes, it was typed in on this exact date. It's not changed from the past.'” Employees can see planned turnover, planned costs, actual costs to date, and enter updated estimates along with explanatory commentary. Timestamped entries, commentary explaining variances, and prevention of retroactive changes deliver the data integrity audit processes demand.

3. Centralized Project Documentation

The data integrity benefits extended to another critical area.  CBW uses Write! to centralize project information that previously lived in fragmented Excel files. The team enters data about projects, dates, and product readiness. “We wrote this information in 10 different Excel sheets which were stored on 10 different file servers,” said Johannes Hartmann, IT Head of Process Management and SAP Development. With such fragmented systems, it was hard to know if they were working with accurate data.   Now, project data flows into a single system where all stakeholders access the same information, Hartmann said. Dirks emphasized the value of working with “a single source of truth.”  Write! keeps data clean through built-in validation. Fields accept only numbers where needed. Dates follow consistent formats. Drop-downs provide pre-set values. That eliminates the data quality problems that came with scattered Excel files. 

As CBW's Write! usage grew across these three areas, they made another strategic move: migrating to the cloud.  For a company with operations across multiple continents, cloud deployment solves connectivity challenges that on-premises systems couldn’t. “We have a sister company in China, and it's not easy to connect or to share data with them,” Hartmann explained. “Our internal IT manager said you can't implement Qlik in China in the way we do it at the moment, on-premises. They can't get access. But with the cloud, it was easier to get them into this system.”  Mobile access works seamlessly. With the on-premises system, they couldn't use Qlik on mobile phones and tablets. “But now, it's really simple, it's easy,” Hartmann said. The cloud version now extends the value of Write! into the field.  The cloud also delivers easier administration with automatic updates, reduced IT maintenance, and simpler cloud-to-cloud connection as CBW moves to Microsoft Dynamics 365 CRM. The team is interested in the potential for Write! to enable write back to Dynamics 365 CRM in the future. The company is positioned to expand Write! usage across CBPG. 

When asked what advice they would give other companies, both Dirks and Hartmann emphasized the value of their hands-on approach and the lasting understanding it brings. “Do it yourself with the help of consultants,” Dirks said.  Building internal capability meant later implementations went faster, and the team kept the knowledge in-house.  Hartmann provided a compelling endorsement: “Qlik is a big success story in our company.” In the past, they put lots of time and money into building reports in SAP.  “And we can build it now with Qlik pretty easily, and everybody who we talk to in our company is very happy with Qlik.”  He characterized Write! as the finishing touch to their Qlik success story: “Write! is the cherry on top.”