瑞士联邦铁路连接计划以降低复杂性并提高灵活性

With almost 15,000 employees, a consolidated turnover of around 5.5 billion Swiss francs (about $6 billion USD), and around 1.3 million passengers a day, Passenger Transport is the largest division in the Swiss Federal Railways, known locally as SBB. The basis for Passenger Transport’s operation is integrated corporate planning within SBB’s financial plan, which looks ahead several years. Many steps are required to build the financial plan.

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“The linchpin for us is the timetable,” says Urban Ehret, CFO of SBB Passenger Transport, when explaining how planning in the Passenger Transport division differs from other companies. “In a yogurt factory, sales planning starts with the production plan. With us, the timetable determines the demand and production planning—and once the timetable has been published, it is fixed.”

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Planning at the railway has two other unusual attributes: First, SBB must plan its business on extremely long timeframes—up to 100 years for infrastructure routes (that is, railroad track) and around 25 years for the train cars themselves. Therefore, medium-term corporate planning—the primary horizon that Ehret’s team operates on—is done on a six-year time scale. Second, SBB is vertically and horizontally integrated, which makes planning within the divisions large and complex. Sales, services, IT, maintenance, and other business units operate independently, but are mutually dependent on one another. In the Passenger Transport division alone, around 30 SBB business units coordinate plans with each other.

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20 workbooks, 12,000 scripts, and a game of telephone

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The complexity, scope, and number of business units involved in planning made it clear that SBB Passenger Transport needed a professional planning tool. But before such a platform could be deployed, the company standardized its business and planning logic in spreadsheets by building a prototype that it could later transfer to a professional planning environment.

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The scale of the project was huge: 20 workbooks with as many as 150 tabs apiece were created, and 12,000 scripts were written to control the data exchange among spreadsheets. Internally, the prototype was affectionately known as the “Jungle Book,” and its individual components were named after characters from Rudyard Kipling’s novel.

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The limitations and problems of a spreadsheet-based approach quickly became obvious. Different business units worked with different budget figures, so exchanging information was like a game of telephone at a children’s party: a number might start out as X, but by the time it got into the planning system it had become Y. “If you do not share the same database, you can neither coordinate nor reliably plan joint capacities,” explains Fabia Odermatt, Head of the Controlling Service Center on Passenger Transport’s finance team. In addition to the risk of errors, the large number of data integrations created performance problems: If consolidations within one unit were pending, the aggregation of the entire system could take days.

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And there was a further challenge: SBB’s financial plan is the basis for public subsidies in regional transport. The federal government and various administrative regions (known as cantons) use the financial plan to understand the need for subsidies. Furthermore, an audit trail is mandatory for compliance purposes, but Jungle Book spreadsheets couldn’t provide one.

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Finding an ideal new planning platform

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The criteria were therefore clear: The new planning solution should be auditable, because the Federal Office of Transport and the external and internal auditors also require comprehensible transparency. Above all, planning needed to become more integrated, easy, and intuitive.

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“Flexibility—the ability to adapt to new circumstances—is also an important criterion for us,” Ehret says. “We have frequent organizational changes and regularly need to restate our financials. It is important to be able to adapt our planning quickly, and to do so as independently of the IT department as possible.” Additional criteria were the networking of plans in real time (that is, Connected Planning), and simulation/scenario planning capability. If fewer people are traveling because of COVID-19, for example, how and where can costs be reduced? Unforeseen events like this make the ability to simulate alternatives a necessity.

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Anaplan: Integrated planning with a high degree of maturity

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In 2019 the team started looking for a new planning solution, and through a standardized selection process, Anaplan was chosen as the new planning solution for SBB Passenger Transport. As the successor to the “Jungle Book,” Anaplan fulfilled the requirements: easy use and IT independence, backed up by a convincing proof of concept. Additionally, numerous references such as Nederlandse Spoorwegen, the Dutch National Passenger Railway, demonstrated “the degree of maturity of the solution, because the required functionalities are numerous and the planning is complex,” recalls Odermatt.

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Connected Planning with calculations in the cloud

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Anaplan’s Connected Planning approach was particularly convincing because it directly addresses the 12,000 scripts in the prototype solution. “The calculation power and connected nature of Anaplan are exactly what we needed to seamlessly integrate financial planning with sub-planning at the operational level at SBB,” says Ehret. Because Anaplan is cloud-based, no technical setup was required; once the contract was signed, the system was accessible and construction of the financial planning environment in Anaplan could begin immediately.

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To assist with that construction, SBB secured support from IT and process consultant valantic, an Anaplan partner. “Together we modeled the financial planning prototype from the Jungle Book in Anaplan using a coaching process, Odermatt said. “valantic worked with three SBB model builders to apply best practices and professionalism to the build, and their coaching enabled us to create the planning models on our own.”

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Scenario testing delivers faster reaction to change

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Teams at SBB built out new financial planning models using Agile methods. As COVID-19’s effects evolved, the ability to react and model scenarios took on new importance. Project and investment planning models were implemented earlier than originally expected and connected with the financial plan. This was the only way to create scenarios for the changing conditions related to around 350 SBB projects valued at about 1 billion Swiss francs. For example, if requirements for the IC 2020 train modernization project were to change, how many staff members must be recruited? Can changes be accommodated with overtime pay? Will there be delays in the project? “Instead of playing games of telephone, we were quick to react and make adjustments thanks to Anaplan’s ease of use,” explains Odermatt.

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Answers in a day, and soon in just minutes

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Today, medium-term corporate planning—done on a six-year planning horizon—is fully integrated and takes place in real time. At the same time, the foundation has been laid for migrating and integrating other business unit plans to Anaplan soon. In the meantime, integration is still done through intermediate steps, but the process is continuously optimized, explains Marcel Kummer, team leader in the Controlling Service Center of SBB’s Passenger Transport finance department. Long-term financial planning, with a 30-year planning horizon, will be integrated later.

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Although there is still some distance to go, SBB has achieved a lot, Kummer says. “Around 100 planners now work regularly with Anaplan and are satisfied,” he says. “Before we had Anaplan, consolidations kept four people working for around four hours. With Anaplan, consolidation is much more quick and efficient.”

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The investment planning process has been shortened by six weeks, but the qualitative improvements are even more important than the time savings. “The improvements enabled by Anaplan mean that the right questions can be raised in the planning discussions,” Kummer says. “Instead of asking ‘Which numbers are correct?’ we’re considering substantive questions such as ‘Where are we lacking resources, and how do we respond?’ These are the things management should discuss.”

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Transparent, real-time planning is a pleasure

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Corporate planning at SBB has made a qualitative leap with the new solution. “With Anaplan, accuracy is increased and the numbers are auditable,” summarizes Ehret.

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And because manual, error-prone tasks belong to the past and business unit plans communicate with each other, aggregations and simulations can be created at the push of a button. “With this option, Anaplan enables us to proactively control planning,” says Odermatt. This gives planning greater relevance in SBB’s overall strategy. “Today we know at an early stage where the financial or human resources are insufficient, and we can take active measures to get back on track. Because as we all know, a train without an operator doesn’t get to its destination.” This is what Ehret and his colleagues in SBB’s decision-making bodies do: Keep the company on track so that SBB trains will reach their destination safely and on time for the next 30 years.

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拥有近1.5万名员工，综合营业额约55亿瑞士法郎(约60亿美元)，每天约有130万名乘客，客运部门是瑞士联邦铁路最大的部门，在当地被称为SBB。SBB客运业务的运营基础是在财务计划中整合公司规划，该计划着眼于未来几年。制定财务计划需要很多步骤。

“对我们来说，最关键的是时间表，”SBB客运部门的首席财务官Urban Ehret在解释客运部门的规划与其他公司的不同时表示。“在酸奶厂，销售计划从生产计划开始。对我们来说，时间表决定了需求和生产计划，一旦时间表公布，它就固定了。”

铁路规划还有另外两个不同寻常的特点:首先，SBB必须在非常长的时间框架内规划其业务——基础设施路线(即铁路轨道)要规划100年，而列车车厢本身要规划25年左右。因此，中期企业规划(Ehret团队的主要工作范围)是以6年为时间尺度进行的。其次，SBB是纵向和横向一体化的，这使得部门内部的规划庞大而复杂。销售、服务、IT、维护和其他业务单元独立运行，但相互依赖。仅在客运部门，就有大约30个SBB业务部门相互协调计划。

20本练习册，12000个剧本，还有一个电话游戏

涉及规划的业务单位的复杂性、范围和数量清楚地表明，SBB客运需要一个专业的规划工具。但在部署这样一个平台之前，该公司通过构建一个原型，将其业务和规划逻辑标准化在电子表格中，然后将其转移到专业规划环境中。

这个项目规模巨大:创建了20个工作簿，每个工作簿有多达150个选项卡，编写了12000个脚本来控制电子表格之间的数据交换。在内部，原型机被亲切地称为“奇幻森林”，其各个组件以拉迪亚德·吉卜林小说中的人物命名。

基于电子表格的方法的局限性和问题很快变得显而易见。不同的业务部门使用不同的预算数字，因此交换信息就像儿童聚会上的电话游戏:一个数字可能开始为X但当它进入规划系统时，它已经变成了Y．客运财务团队控制服务中心负责人Fabia Odermatt解释说:“如果不共享同一数据库，就无法协调或可靠地规划联合运力。”除了错误风险之外，大量的数据集成还会产生性能问题:如果一个单元内的整合尚未完成，那么整个系统的聚合可能需要几天时间。

此外，还有一个更大的挑战:瑞士联邦铁路的财政计划是地区交通公共补贴的基础。联邦政府和各个行政区域(称为州)使用财政计划来了解补贴的需求。此外，出于遵从性的目的，审计追踪是强制性的，但《奇幻森林》的电子表格无法提供。

寻找一个理想的新规划平台

因此，标准是明确的:新的规划解决方案应该是可审计的，因为联邦运输局以及外部和内部审计员也需要可理解的透明度。最重要的是，规划需要变得更加整合、简单和直观。

“灵活性——适应新环境的能力——对我们来说也是一个重要的标准，”Ehret说。“我们经常进行组织调整，需要定期重申我们的财务状况。重要的是能够快速调整我们的计划，并尽可能独立于It部门。”附加的标准是计划的实时联网(即连接规划)，以及模拟/场景规划能力。例如，如果因COVID-19而旅行的人减少了，如何以及在哪里可以降低成本?像这样不可预见的事件使得模拟替代方案的能力成为必要。

Anaplan:高度成熟的综合规划

2019年，该团队开始寻找新的规划解决方案，通过标准化的选择过程，anplan被选为SBB客运的新规划解决方案。作为《奇幻森林》(Jungle Book)的继承者，Anaplan满足了这些要求:易于使用和IT独立性，并有令人信服的概念证明作为支持。此外，大量的参考文献，如Nederlandse SpoorwegenOdermatt回忆说，荷兰国家客运铁路公司(Dutch National Passenger Railway)展示了“解决方案的成熟程度，因为所需的功能众多，规划也很复杂。”

将规划与云计算连接起来

Anaplan的连接规划方法特别令人信服，因为它直接处理了原型解决方案中的12,000个脚本。“anplan的计算能力和连接特性正是我们在SBB的运营层面无缝集成财务规划和子规划所需要的，”Ehret说。因为Anaplan是基于云的，所以不需要任何技术设置;一旦合同签署，该系统就可以使用，ananplan的财务规划环境的建设可以立即开始。

为了协助施工，SBB获得了ananplan合作伙伴IT和流程咨询公司valantic的支持。奥德马特说:“我们一起用指导过程在阿纳普兰模拟了《奇幻森林》中的财务规划原型。”“valantic与三位SBB模型构建者合作，将最佳实践和专业精神应用到构建中，他们的指导使我们能够自己创建规划模型。”

场景测试提供了对变更更快的反应

瑞士银行的团队使用敏捷方法建立了新的财务规划模型。随着COVID-19影响的演变，应对和模拟情景的能力具有新的重要性。项目和投资规划模型的实施早于预期，并与财务计划相衔接。这是为价值约10亿瑞士法郎的约350个SBB项目相关的不断变化的条件创造情景的唯一方法。例如，如果IC 2020列车现代化项目的要求发生变化，必须招聘多少工作人员?变动是否可以计入加班费?这个项目会有延误吗?Odermatt解释道:“多亏了Anaplan的易用性，我们可以快速做出反应和调整，而不是玩电话游戏。

答案在一天之内，很快在几分钟之内

如今，中期企业规划——以6年规划为基础——完全整合并实时进行。同时也为其他业务单元计划的迁移和整合奠定了基础。与此同时，瑞士联邦铁路客运财务部控制服务中心的团队负责人Marcel Kummer解释说，整合仍然是通过中间步骤完成的，但这一过程正在不断优化。后期将整合长期财务规划，规划期限为30年。

库默说，尽管还有一段路要走，但瑞士联邦银行已经取得了很大的成就。他说:“现在约有100名规划师定期与Anaplan合作，并对此感到满意。”“在我们有Anaplan之前，整合需要4个人工作大约4个小时。有了anplan，整合速度和效率都快得多。”

投资计划过程缩短了6周，但质量上的改进比节省时间更重要。“Anaplan带来的改进意味着在规划讨论中可以提出正确的问题，”Kummer说。“不要问‘哪些数字是正确的?我们正在考虑一些实质性的问题，比如“我们在哪些方面缺乏资源?我们该如何应对?”这些都是管理的事情应该讨论。”

透明、实时的计划是一种乐趣

通过新的解决方案，SBB的企业规划实现了质的飞跃。Ehret总结道:“有了anplan，准确性提高了，数字也可审计。

而且，由于手动的、容易出错的任务属于过去，业务单元计划可以相互通信，因此只需按一下按钮就可以创建聚合和模拟。Odermatt说:“有了这个选项，Anaplan使我们能够主动控制规划。这使得规划在SBB的整体战略中具有更大的相关性。他说:“今天，我们在早期阶段就知道哪里的财政或人力资源不足，我们可以采取积极措施，使之回到正轨。因为我们都知道，没有操作员的火车是无法到达目的地的。”这就是埃雷特和他在德国联邦铁路决策机构的同事们所做的:让公司保持在正轨上，以便在未来30年里，德国联邦铁路的列车能够安全准时到达目的地。