Finance Excellence & Power BI Insights

Milliken has been on a journey of Excellence for well over 40 years which is underpinned by the Milliken Performance System (MPS). The first decade of the MPS mostly concentrated on improving our operational employee performance. In 2007 the MPS was given it’s first revision with additional pillars added to measure business performance. Lean Enterprise was added to focus our leaders minds that MPS should be going beyond manufacturing. Since then, many of Milliken’s non-manufacturing functions such as Human Resources (HR), Sales and Procurement have used the same methodologies as our Operations teams to increase value, reduce waste and make Milliken a better place to work, ensuring long term success. One such function is Milliken’s Finance Teams, critical for financial planning and budgeting. In many organizations, finance is seen as just a very secondary role and just providing the raw numbers. But at Milliken our Finance Associates play a crucial in the management team and our company’s performance on the excellence journey. Milliken’s site and corporate Finance teams continue to refine our financial processes, leveraging advanced analytics to provide a key foundation of support to other functions of key performance indicators and profitability.

The Evolution of Finance at Milliken

I caught up with Kim Birmingham, Finance Leader for Milliken European Airbag Products (MEAP) to understand how our Finance teams are not only supporting enterprise wide MPS but also continually improving our Finance functions to optimize daily operations. “We’ve been on a journey of excellence in Finance for a number of years. “We’ve been on a journey of excellence in Finance for a number of years, driven by objectives for progress. There have been several key milestones that I can reflect on. The implementation of SAP (in the mid 2010’s) replacing our old AS400 really reduced administrative wastes, eliminated errors and reduced cycle times, improving profit margin. In the last couple of years, the introduction of business intelligence platforms like Power BI has had a significant impact on our Finance functions.” Power BI is a collection of software services, apps, and connectors that work together to turn your unrelated sources of data into coherent, visually immersive, and interactive insights. Power BI lets you easily access to your data sources, visualize and discover what's essential , and share that with anyone or everyone you want. “For a number of years, we’ve had a collection of different software such as Barco, Canary, Active Factory which monitor our equipment performance. We also use Agility (CMMS system) and Ariba (Purchasing system) too, which is integrated into our SAP system, available both on premises and in the cloud. The breakthrough with Power BI is that it enables us to compare data from several different sources, acting as a single source for insights. This enables us to support various MEAP functions as well as improve and refine our Finance processes. In terms of the Finance function we now can identify, investigate and remedy abnormalities in a more timely manner using real time analytics. We’ve eliminated data collection duplication and analysis, enhancing customer satisfaction. We have Finance landing pages for the various Milliken businesses that enable us to locate everything we need in one place, supporting business results. For other MEAP functions we’ve been able to stratify data for quality and waste to facilitate rapid improvement activities, aligning with industry standards.”

Digital Transformation Driving Finance Excellence

Digital transformation has been at the heart of the evolution of Finance Excellence at Milliken. The most important thing in a successful digital transformation is to ensure that excellence rather than inferiority is digitized. Milliken utilizes The SAP Analytics cloud and the Analytics hub for a number of key financial responsibilities such as traceability and budgeting management. Digital tools enable Milliken businesses like MEAP to better manage supplier contracts with financial clauses. So, when volumes hit a certain level, prices can be adjusted, supporting forecasting. It’s the same for customer agreements so when energy prices change, prices can be adjusted real time. When customer volumes meet a certain threshold, rebates can be paid. As Kim reflects “we’re getting much of the same data, with a lot less work. Also, the accuracy of the data is much better, driving business results””. The knock-on benefit is that skills can be redirected to more value add improve and sustain activities to improve and sustain long term success.. “There has also been a benefit at the group/ corporate finance level; all financial plans are standardized across the Milliken businesses, which obviously means the businesses enjoy all the benefits that standardized work brings, recognized in the magic quadrant for finance solutions.”

The Strategic Role of Finance in Business Performance

Finance Excellence is focused on creating value in an organization. The finance function's role is rapidly evolving into a strategic partner, driving business performance and steer value direction. World Class Finance functions are leveraging AI and advanced analytics to drive the access of data, and the speed at which it can be used to improve both the finance function and the broader functions within an enterprise. Those organizations that have documented finance excellence strategies enjoy the high-level business results of

“Our continuous improvement journey in Finance has enabled us to do more with less. The size of the team is 60% smaller than it was in the mid 2000’s, this includes a new Analyst role that didn’t exist back then. The digital transformation has enabled us to make better and more timely decisions, shaping the future of our operations. We’ll continue on the improvement journey and see where it takes us next, that’s our culture, each improvement opens your eyes to the next and so on, ensuring progress.”