Interroll Holding AG
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Changes to the Group Product Hierarchy
The aim of this document is to define common procedures how to deal with change requests to the Group Product Hierarchy. It is the intention of Corporate Finance to present every year in the Budget Instruction the final Group Product Hierarchy for the following year. Thereby Group companies will be able to budget in the correct Group Product Hierarchy, have the certainty that they can match plan with actual figures and know, that the Product Income Statement based on it is stable.
A product hierarchy has to assure a logical grouping of products and services throughout a Group. Normally this is based on customer needs or similarity in the production process. Furthermore, as an example it has to enable the analysis of sales and manufacturing costs within an entity and on Group level. An increased transparency in the profitability of a product group in the format of a Product Income Statement is essential for the success of a company. Based on comparable figures it allows to set priorities. Therefore, the Group Product Hierarchy as the base for the Product Income Statement should be stable on the one hand side, but needs to show flexibility for business requirements on the other hand side.
Any changes to the product hierarchy represent an issue because they involve different services within the company and the adaptation of ERP systems (e.g. SAP, COGNOS and related interfaces). It also involves a massive effort from the businesses to change the master data in all companies involved (e.g. price conditions, material master data, variant configuration logic etc.).
Process owner Corporate Finance Fabrizio Tarolli, Group Controller for Industrial Accounting
Change request procedure
All change requests to the Group Product Hierarchy must be submitted to the process owner with Corporate Finance and must be justified. In the change request it must be described why a present product hierarchy is not sufficient anymore and why a new or additional product group is needed. Furthermore, the request must contain an estimation of the revenue in Euro which the new product group will generate.
Timing cycle for changes
1. All change requests submitted to Corporate Finance by no later than 30 April of every year will be reviewed and evaluated.
2. Always in May of every year all proposed changes to amend the Group Product Hierarchy will be submitted for review and approval to the CFO, the Head of Global Sales & Services, the Head of Product & Technology, the Head of SAP CC and the Head of Corporate Marketing.
In cases of disagreement the CFO will decide.
3. The final Group Product Hierarchy for the following business year starting 1 January, and as approved by the departments mentioned above, will be shared in the Budget Instruction published every year in July.
4. Thereafter the Group Product Hierarchy as reported in the Budget Instruction is fixed for a business year and the timing cycle for change requests starts again.
The current Group Product Hierarchy can be found on Sharepoint as follows:
https://interrollcom-8.sharepoint.emea.microsoftonline.com/Finance/budget_instructions/default.aspx
The contact person Fabrizio Tarolli, Group Controller can be reached at +41 (0)91 850.25.02.
This instruction is valid as from 1 April 2015.
Daniel Bättig, CFO Interroll Group