Salary budgeting at SOS International

has been centralised across country borders

SOS International has created an effective centralised budgeting solution, which unifies the company across countries and business divisions. The solution supports the company’s vision of being perceived as the most trustworthy Nordic assistance company by its customers.

Henrik Schjødt-Bruhn, Head of BI & Business Controlling Finance SOS International, states: ”I do not doubt that the Prophix solution from Accobat will help support our future growth.”

Centralisation of the reporting and budgeting processes

The financial process – including salary budgeting – was one of the areas SOS International deemed to have significant potential for optimization.

“The challenge of budgeting was resolved with Accobat’s consultants, who have helped us implement the budgeting and reporting solution, Prophix,” Henrik Schjødt-Bruhn states.

Prophix centralises, standardises and automates the budgeting process across companies and cost centres in different countries. The solution includes an advanced salary model, as well as an income statement module, which collects data about implemented results and the budgeting.

On behalf of insurance companies, SOS International helps policyholders with the best possible roadside assistance in the Nordic countries and Europe. Furthermore, SOS secures travellers’ medical treatment or hospitalisation across the whole globe. SOS International has more than 1.200 employees and 24/7 emergency dispatch centres in Copenhagen, Aarhus, Oslo, Stockholm, Gothenburg and Helsinki.

It requires a robust digital budgeting platform to be a leader in this market. SOS International’s vision is to continue to strengthen its market position as the most trustworthy assistance company in the Nordic countries.

For a modern assistance company experiencing growth, it is important to create centralised and intelligent processes, which streamlines the business and helps create the optimal service experiences for policyholders with an urgent need of help.

Created transparency in the budgeting process without complex ERP projects

“Prophix saves on resources. Most of it is automatic, and we have created much more transparency, overview and agility in the budgeting process since we no longer need to handle decentralized budgeting processes and asynchronous validation of data,” Henrik Schjødt-Bruhn comments.

With the Prophix solution from Accobat as the digital nerve in the budgeting process, SOS International has optimised its budgeting process. Salaries, which is one of the company’s biggest expenses, is a good example. Before, salary budgeting was an extremely resource demanding and manual job and was based in several systems.

Today, the company works under one central budgeting system in all countries. It gives one budgeting solution and one way of calculating salaries.

“This has given us a solid overview of the implemented and future salary costs for the whole organisation from month to month,” Henrik Schjødt-Bruhn, Head of BI & Business Controlling Finance SOS International, adds.

Strengthens the dialogue between the finance function and management

Henrik Schjødt-Bruhn also emphasises that Prophix supports the dialogue between the finance function and management by creating a more in-depth insight into the budgets.

“With access to valid budgeting numbers, it is easier for the finance department to host budgeting meetings with management, because we, for instance, can utilise data from Prophix to discuss the business areas of the individual countries. It is also easier to benchmark across countries. Furthermore, Prophix helps us deciding which investments will support our strategy the best. This valuable insight can also be used to assess the specific costs by, for instance, paving new pathways business-wise in a given country. The efficiency improvement of our budgeting and reporting has been reached without a massive and complex ERP project for standardisation.”

Great opportunities for follow-up

According to Henrik Schjødt-Bruhn, the opportunities for follow-up are also great, since Prophix is well integrated with the salary systems.

“It secures that salary data on the level of the individual employee is automatically transferred to Prophix. By doing this, we can watch and follow up on the salary development from month to month much better, and report about this to management.”

Henrik Schjødt-Bruhn also points out that the integration between Prophix and the salary system strengthen the option of continuous, rolling forecasts.

A strong solution requires a strong partner

“Accobat has an experienced team and they serve as a great sparring partner. They consist of a competent team of both experienced business consultants and technical consultants.”

Henrik Schjødt-Bruhn explains that the consultants have helped them streamline their budgeting and reporting and made sure that they avoided starting a massive and complex ERP project for standardisation. The Prophix solution communicates smoothly with their other business systems and delivers everything they need for the budgeting process.

“We have gained a digital edge by making Prophix the budgeting tool for our company. I do not doubt that the solution and Accobat’s counselling will help support our future growth,” states Henrik SchjødtBruhn, Head of BI & Business Controlling Finance at SOS International.