Operating 50 corporations throughout Europe, Asia and the Americas, ARaymond Network has grown rapidly through mergers, affiliations and acquisitions. A leader in the automotive and industrial fields, the organization chose software from SAP AG when it needed a reliable and scalable solution to manage complex reporting requirements and maintain compliance with operational reporting regulations. ARaymond relies on the SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation application to help its large and diverse network of companies better analyze, understand and plan by providing a platform for reliable data from a central source.

Founded in 1865, ARaymond Network is a family-owned business based in Grenoble, France. As the organization grew, its method of gathering data for financial reports in spreadsheets -- with each country submitting its data in a different format -- proved to be an unsustainable practice. At the end of every month, the financial accounting teams manually aggregated, corrected and revised the data submitted in the spreadsheets. As a result, the month-end process was tedious work, a drain on resources and a source of potential error and risk to the business. To keep productivity up to its normally high standards, ARaymond knew it had to invest in performance tools to streamline planning and close cycles and reduce errors.

Implemented in less than five months, the project was completed on time and within budget, and users were able to get up and running on the solution quickly. With SAP BusinessObjects Planning and Consolidation, ARaymond's financial team is relieved of time-consuming manual reconciliations and can now produce the monthly financial report much faster, freeing them up to perform value-added activities such as detailed analysis. Ad-hoc reporting is swifter and more accurate, and budget control has been greatly improved. Integration with the enterprise resource planning (ERP) application SAP ERP and non-SAP software, based on the SAP NetWeaver technology platform, offers users quick access to a comprehensive range of information. ARaymond plans to acquire additional SAP BusinessObjects solutions.