How cloud fine-tuned planning at the speed of sound

Most drivers get in the car and switch on the radio without a second thought. They likely aren’t aware of the complexity of the audio systems that channel their favorite tunes. Yet Italy-based ASK Automotive Industries Group—which supplies antennas, amplifiers, acoustics and cables for affordable city runarounds and high-performance supercars alike—spends years developing and producing a single product. Despite ASK’s global success, the company had a limited ability to analyze and evaluate new requests for quotations (RFQ) from automakers.

Assessing RFQs took days or even weeks, with multiple departments around the world aggregating and analyzing data via email in spreadsheets. This didn’t always yield accurate calculations, and left no time to explore alternative, what-if scenarios that would help determine the true value of opportunities.

ASK’s RFQ analyses are complex for two key reasons. First, one production line might make antennas for multiple car brands, so adding new products and parts brings cost and logistical complexity. Second is that different products vary in their intricacy and production lifecycles. Antennas might comprise a few part numbers, take a year to develop and stay in production for five years. By contrast, an acoustics product might have dozens of parts, take three years to develop and have a decade-long production run. The more new products ASK agrees to manufacture, the more complicated end-to-end planning gets.

ASK’s disconnected RFQ evaluation process meant that the company might be passing on good opportunities while assessing and pursuing contracts that, with full visibility into the long-term impact on cost structure and profitability, it didn’t actually want to win.

The new Connected Planning Processes and Anaplan rollout—consisting of several go-lives along the way—were completed in less than a year and on budget.

ASK now has a connected planning framework, encompassing RFQ, sales budget, investment budget, financial budget and the strategic plan. Anaplan users can now collaborate simultaneously across multiple departments around the world and keep the planning process under control.

The time and effort of RFQ analysis was vastly reduced, so now ASK can quickly and accurately assess the long-term impact of new business opportunities—and decide whether or not to bid.

Consolidation of the sales budget, which previously required a week of work, now takes less than a day. And calculating what-if scenarios associated with an RFQ, which used to take a full day of work, now takes just seconds. The calculations are proven to be spot on every time.

The new system has freed up employees across the various departments and geographies from data sourcing and crunching to instead analyzing results and making strategic decisions. Best of all, no additional personnel were hired to manage or maintain the system. Instead, this new platform is run by one person on ASK’s Finance team, part-time.

Developing audio components for cars may be complex, highly technical work. But evaluating new business opportunities in that space is now nearly as simple as switching on the car radio.