Tord Gjerløw and Anja Hauståker on Norway’s Best fjord cruise between Flåm and Gudvangen, which also passes through Nærøyfjord.
It started with the Profitbase Matrix in Power BI, and then it grew to include the budgeting and forecasting solution as well. Since then, the workday has never been the same.
-Not many people find joy in moving numbers from one spreadsheet to another. It’s much more fun to analyze the numbers than to create them yourself. Profitbase helps us not only to hire new people, but also to maintain job satisfaction for those who are already working here, smiles Anja Hauståker as she leans back in her chair at the hotel in Flåm, one of the many hotels owned by her employer, Norway’s Best. As a tourism operator, Norway’s Best offers a range of activities, experiences, packages, and accommodations at various destinations, including Flåm. This includes everything from the Flåm Railway to fjord cruises and customers from all over the world. Before the pandemic, in 2019, they had a turnover of 190 million kroner, which they aim to achieve again next year as they recover from the pandemic.
Many workdays saved
She and her colleague Tord Gjerløw have been using Profitbase’s budgeting and forecasting solution for almost a year now. Before that, they did the same work in spreadsheets.
-Overall, many workdays are saved by using Profitbase, especially this year when there were so many versions of the budget back and forth and many people involved in the files. I can’t imagine how it would have gone well in spreadsheets, says Tord, continuing:
-So the timing was very good that we started this in October and became confident with the systems before we began using them in the budgeting process.
Both Anja and Tord work daily with Profitbase systems. Tord as a financial analyst, and Anja as Head of Accounting Flåm and ARU group at Norway’s Best.
-I’ve been here for just over eight years, and Tord for almost a year and a half, and we saw that it was really time for some new systems. We were under such pressure to streamline the processes, so it didn’t matter much if others liked the decision or not, laughs Anja.
-But it was definitely a bonus that they did. And it was, of course, a bonus we wanted to achieve. It’s very attractive when you get everything in one program and don’t have all these shadow accounts, she says.
-With financial reports, we can compare different versions without doing any manual compilation, and it is available to everyone. You don’t need to ask anyone for this or that file to compare something, says Tord, getting a nod from Anja who takes over.
-We have divisions in the company where we have business area managers and department heads under them, and then you often have sub-department heads or team leaders under them again. In Profitbase, they all have customized rights that define what they can see and where they should do their part of the work. Then the business area manager can defend it to the CEO and the board. The manager sees everything and it’s incredibly nice. Before, we had to create a report for them again, but now they are part of the whole process.
-How many hours do you save with this process?
– It’s hard to estimate exactly, but what is just as important is data quality. Before – even if we felt finished – we didn’t feel confident that there wasn’t something we hadn’t seen.
-Now we feel confident, the duo smiles.
In good momentum
-What would you say are the biggest advantages of this software?
-With this system, we have a more updated basis at all times. That’s what we felt with spreadsheets – you spent so much time creating numbers that you didn’t have time to look at them before you had to send them off. Now we have much more time to feel comfortable with the numbers before we pass them on. We just press update, says Anja.
-Previously, it often took us up to a week and a half from when people told us they were finished until it went further from us. Now it only takes a few days because we don’t have to do the manual work afterward. We don’t have to piece together spreadsheets, aggregate numbers, or do all these manual entries, so it becomes much more efficient. And now, when we had so many rounds of it, the deadline was at the end, it was very difficult to adjust it as it was before, supplements Tord.
-So you avoid punching so many numbers and can work more with analysis and value creation? What value does this have for the company, do you become more attractive as an employer?
-I think so, because we are actually quite an attractive workplace for economists. Considering how much you get to be involved with the different industries. But not many people find joy in moving numbers from one spreadsheet to another. It’s much more fun to look at the numbers than to create them yourself. So I think it helps us not only to hire new people but also to maintain job satisfaction for those who are already working here, she repeats enthusiastically and continues:
-It’s much more enjoyable. Especially now when you feel you’re sending off a good result – it’s something you believe in yourself. And not something you hope will go well.
Tord nods and summarizes briefly:
-For us at Norway’s Best, the introduction of Profitbase has meant that we save a lot of time on manual tasks and that we have a system in the background that can do a lot of the work we used to do manually. We can spend much more time processing and looking at the numbers, analyzing them. Instead of spending our time preparing, we now spend our time analyzing.
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