Better support for planning and analysis at Bilia thanks to Mercur Business Control 

Bilia chose Mercur Business Control as a group-wide solution for budgeting, forecasting, and analysis for the central functions and nearly 100 car dealers in Scandinavia. 

A solution based on Mercur Business Control

Following an evaluation of different suppliers, the choice became Mercur Solutions, which was commissioned to initially implement the solution at the largest company in Sweden with 68 plants, in Norway with 20 plants and at the parent company Bilia AB.

The assignment included the standard Mercur Business Control application as well as consulting services for the implementation of a solution in a central Citrix environment for a total of 530 users who access the system through thin clients.

Integration with Bilia's data warehouse 

Mercur initiated the project with the integration against Bilia's data warehouse and created an interface for daily automatic updating of Mercur with both data and code plan. The various code sections, that is. account, cost center, product and brand, and their shadow codes, in the form of different groupings, are maintained outside Mercur but automatically updates Mercur's code plan and hierarchies. This was important for Bilia when using these shadow codes to create the rows in their report package and thus simplify the design and maintenance of the reports.

With Mercur's dynamic reports, you can then "tease" from the total level via different hierarchical levels down to individual transactions, from where you can also directly view scanned invoices. This also requires that the solution is capable of handling Bilia's volumes with between 15 and 20 million transaction lines annually.

Mercur Business Control at Bilia today

Since the solution was launched, Bilia uses Mercur Business Control for budget and three forecasts as well as for continuous analysis and follow-up. The system also generates a structured output file as a basis for the Group's legal consolidation system.

By using Mercur's multi-company solution, you can work with different code plans in Sweden and Norway. At the same time as it is possible to share reports and form templates, this also gives freedom to develop individual reports for the different markets as needed. The users also appreciate that the system's menus and texts are both in Swedish and Norwegian and that the system supports planning and analysis in local currencies.

Bilia has also benefited from Mercur's functionality to distribute common costs, such as central workshop costs, in several steps via regions down to individual workshops. The system's advanced calculation logic is also suitable for creating rules for how planned revenue within one function generates revenue for other functions, which can be illustrated, for example, by the relationship between new car sales, delivering workshops and accessories.

Plans for Mercur at Bilia

The next step with Bilia will be to roll out Mercur to its users in several new companies that have been acquired and in Denmark where it operates an additional 8 plants.

There are also plans to create a link to the payroll systems Vivaldi and Agda from where you will import detailed personnel data for budget and forecast. Bilia also evaluates the possibility of using Mercur for the ongoing reporting of financial outcomes and to create an investment module that is linked to the financial reporting.