What we build
Software across the whole business, built to your scope.
We build analytics and planning software for every part of a business that makes, moves or sells goods. Some clients want one report, others a whole planning cycle, and add-ons are normal. If it's business analytics or process automation, we build it.
Commercial analytics
See where revenue and margin come from, by customer, brand, product, market and channel, from gross sales down to what is left after every discount, rebate and piece of trade spend. For every company that sells goods: manufacturers, brand owners, distributors, wholesalers and retailers.
- Sales and margin reporting. What changed against last year, for the month, the year to date or the last twelve months, and the biggest gainers and losers. A sales table by any dimension or any two combined, a monthly statement from gross sales to gross profit, the same filters on every screen, and a pivot table for the question no standard screen answers. For groups, a view without the sales between your own companies.
- Gross to net. Every invoice line from gross sales to profit: invoice and promotional discounts, off-invoice rebates and trade spend, net-net sales, cost of goods and gross profit. Rebates booked as one monthly figure per customer are spread over the products that customer bought, so every product carries its true net price.
- Customer and product profitability. A customer P&L with each customer's own discounts and trade spend, a customer-by-brand profitability map, and contribution margin after logistics and marketing. The customers who take deep discounts for a thin margin are ranked, and you can see how many products, customers or markets carry most of your sales and profit.
- Pricing and revenue growth management. Realised price by brand and month, and which brands raised their prices. A price-pack ladder that flags every bigger pack costing more per kilo than a smaller one, price tiers and the gaps between them, and how much of a list-price change reached the shelf. Price elasticity and promotion lift estimated from your own sales history, and a register of revenue actions with their approvals.
- Promotions. The full P&L of promoted and base sales, a day-by-day promotion calendar for each product, margin by depth of discount, and the customers who take promotional money while their volume falls. For a promotion you are planning, the extra volume, net sales and margin it should bring, and its return after its cost, from the uplift you expect. Any two selections, such as this season against last, compared side by side and turned into a PowerPoint deck or an Excel workbook in one click.
- Trade and marketing spend. Trade investment by customer and brand, and a reallocation to where it returns the most volume. The A&P budget by brand, market and channel, a register of marketing activities with planned against actual results, campaign return, and candidates for delisting.
- The commercial plan in money. Your price lists and trade terms, however they are structured, are set up in the system, and the demand plan is priced customer by customer into net sales and margin. Click any euro in the plan to see how it was built.
- Why sales and margin moved. Bridges from last year, the budget or last month's plan, with the biggest contributors named, and a map of growth against margin. Price, volume and mix is here too, with new and lost business, in the convention your finance team uses.
Product cost and production analytics
Know what each product really costs to make, at every plant and in every month, and why that cost moved. The same figures show how the factories perform, where each product is cheapest to make, and what a new product will cost before it exists. For companies that make goods, in their own plants or through contract manufacturers.
- Actual product cost, every month. The cost of every product at every plant, from what was really bought, used and made. It stays split into materials, packaging, labour, energy, maintenance, depreciation and overhead all the way up the recipe, so a finished product still shows the energy used three stages down. Semi-finished goods, rework, co-products and by-products, and stock moved between plants are all costed, and energy comes from the actual invoices.
- Your costing method. Costing practice differs from company to company, and the software follows yours: at what point production is valued, how the cost of unused capacity is treated, how co-products share cost, and which keys spread overhead.
- Every euro accounted for. A monthly check that everything each cost centre spent reached a product, with the cost of idle capacity on its own line. Any unit cost opens into simple rows, quantity times rate, that add up exactly and export to Excel with live formulas.
- Why cost of goods sold moved. A cost-of-goods bridge between any two points: month on month, year on year, budget to actual or standard to actual. It splits by cost component and by category, brand, factory or product family, names the products that moved most, and drills down through the recipe to the input and plant where a change started.
- Factory performance and standards. A production cost statement for plant controllers, factory measures such as kilos and energy cost for each hour a line runs, capacity and utilisation per line, and purchase prices, usage and yield against standard. Standard costs are built from the bottom up, so editing a wage or an energy price moves them. Line utilisation can be followed by plant, line, shift and day.
- Where to make it. A model of your factory network, built on your own cost figures. Move a line, close or open a plant, or change wages or energy prices, and each scenario is priced against today's network, with capacity, freight, one-off costs and payback. The software can also find the lowest-cost network: which plants stay open, and where each product is made.
- New products, costed before they exist. Build a recipe from priced ingredients, packaging and existing semi-finished goods, choose the plant and line, and watch the unit cost build up. The same recipe is quoted on every suitable line at every plant, and compared with the family of products it would join.
S&OP planning
One monthly cycle takes the business from an agreed demand plan to a production, purchasing and stock plan the plants can run, down to a work order for each product, line, day and shift. Every sign-off is recorded, and the plan flows into the budget in money. For anyone who plans supply against demand: a manufacturer planning lines and purchasing, a distributor planning stock, a retailer planning replenishment.
- The monthly cycle. Demand, stock, the working calendar, materials, production, purchasing and the balance of supply and demand over a rolling eighteen months, ending in an executive review. Demand, supply, finance and the executive team each sign off, with who signed and when. A page for the phone carries the headline figures, the top risks and the approval buttons.
- Demand planning. A statistical forecast for every product and market, with the best method picked by testing each one against past months. Promotions, holidays, listings and customer commitments are built in, and every change a planner makes carries a reason. Forecast accuracy shows whether those changes helped.
- Stock. A stock plan for every product and material, stock policy by value and demand pattern, excess and obsolete stock, and a what-if that shows the cash released by lower stock targets and the products it would put at risk.
- Working calendar and capacity. A calendar for every line, day and shift. Shift patterns, public holidays and maintenance are applied in bulk, and you see the hours and kilos it gives each line before any plan is run.
- Production plan, down to the work order. A plan worked out day by day within everything that limits the plants: hours, line speeds, which lines can make which product, batch sizes, changeovers, crews and materials. It becomes work orders for each product, line, day and shift, sequenced to keep changeovers short, and each work order is checked for crew, maintenance and materials. Move one, add a Saturday shift or raise a rush purchase, and see the effect.
- Materials and purchasing. Material needs through every level of the recipe, a recipe editor with a change workflow, and a purchase plan that respects order sizes, full containers, supplier capacity and lead times. A lowest-cost option weighs landed cost, holding cost and lateness, and a supplier scorecard and supplier risk sit alongside.
- When supply is short. What can be promised, allocation by customer priority, fair share, margin or contract, and a customer's request answered on the spot: how much, and by when.
- Workforce planning. Skills and the crew each line needs on each shift, an employee roster with absences and working patterns, and empty seats filled from qualified operators within working-time rules. You see the gap between crew hours needed and available, what closing it costs, and a hiring plan by skill and month.
Budgeting, forecasting and board reporting
A budget built from the operating plan by the people who own each number, with the P&L, balance sheet and cash flow held together, and a rolling forecast that says where the year will land and why. The same system runs month-end reporting, group consolidation and board reporting, and every figure can be traced to the lines behind it. For every company, and for groups with several companies and currencies.
- Targets and the budget. Targets per KPI and profit centre, revenue and cost of goods from volume, price and unit cost, and operating costs planned by cost centre and submitted by their owners for approval. A personnel budget built position by position, and capital projects with a business case and payback. Sign-off runs from planner to department head, controller, CFO and CEO, and the budget can't be locked until the balance sheet balances and the cash reconciles.
- Built from the operating plan. Revenue and cost of goods come from the demand plan, factory and logistics costs from the S&OP plan, stock from the supply plan, and receivables and payables from payment terms. The budget and the operating plan are the same plan.
- Forecasting. Where the year will land, with the walk from budget to landing. A rolling eighteen-month forecast with a cash curve that shows the lowest point and when it comes, accuracy measured every month, and the assumption that moves profit most if it turns out wrong.
- Long-range plan and valuation. A plan over several years with downside, base and upside cases, and a company valuation by discounted cash flow.
- Month-end and group reporting. A month-end checklist with owners, due dates and dependencies, and balance-sheet reconciliations prepared and approved by different people. Actuals come from the general ledger and are checked, and group consolidation covers intercompany matching, eliminations, minority interests and currency translation.
- Management and board reporting. The P&L, balance sheet and cash flow on one screen, with any line opened up to show why it moved. A KPI scorecard, a report builder, report books and management commentary, which an AI assistant can draft if you choose. Board packs in PowerPoint or PDF are one example of what it can produce.
Strategy and initiatives
Turn the strategy into initiatives with owners, timing and money attached, and check each brand against what its own numbers say it needs. New products, marketing plans and revenue actions roll up against the strategy, and the strategy flows into the budget.
- Brand health. A health check for every brand in every category, ending in a plain verdict: whether the issue is volume or profit, at home or in export, and whether it lies in price, trade terms or cost.
- Initiatives. For each brand, the initiatives its own numbers call for, sized in gross profit a year. A register with owners, timing and each initiative's yearly effect, grouped into programmes, and workbenches for R&D, operations, procurement, IT, finance, HR and sustainability.
- The strategic plan. A five-year plan for each brand and for the whole portfolio, and a bridge from the baseline through each initiative to the ambition. The budget can't be locked while it sits too far from the strategy target, unless someone overrides it on record.
- Market data. Retail-panel data across markets, matched to your own brands and categories, with each market's share, rank and price index.
- New products. A launch pipeline for new products, line extensions, reformulations and relaunches, where marketing, R&D, supply, finance and regulatory each own a checklist. First-year volume enters the demand plan before the product code exists, and a review after launch compares year one with the plan.
How your data comes in, and what comes out.
Data comes in the way that suits you: from the exports your team already produces, or through a direct connection to your database, data warehouse or ERP. It is checked before anyone relies on it.
Your data. Sales, discounts and rebates · the general ledger · stock · production orders · recipes · costs by cost centre · payroll · market data. From exports or a direct connection.
Checks. Your team confirms once how the columns map. Totals are matched to the figures you already report, and a month that fails the checks is held back with the reasons listed.
Your definitions. What gross sales, deductions, cost of goods and a customer mean in your company, agreed in writing and built into every screen.
What comes out. Screens · Excel files that keep their formulas · PowerPoint and PDF packs · reports by email on a schedule · alerts · data feeds for your own BI team.
Access, control and your data.
- Named accounts with roles, access limited by market and by legal entity, single sign-on, and users added and removed automatically from your company directory.
- A record of every change, and the history of every plan figure, override and forecast adjustment.
- Figures in the currency each user chooses, and a separate workspace for each company or business unit.
Nothing leaves your system unless you ask for it. Options such as scheduled reports by email, alerts, or an AI assistant that needs to send figures to a model are agreed in the scope, by your choice. Your data is never used to train models. A full technical description is available to your IT or security team on request.
Across the whole business.
We know the key processes of companies that make, move or sell goods from the inside, well beyond finance. This is what we have built for each of them.
- Sales and key accounts. Customer and channel profitability, the customer P&L, trade terms, allocation when supply is short, and delivery requests answered on the spot.
- Revenue management and pricing. Price realisation, price-pack architecture, price compliance, price elasticity and promotion economics.
- Trade marketing and brand. A&P budgets, a register of marketing activities, campaign return and the reallocation of spend.
- New product development. Launch stages with checklists, the launch ramp, the review after launch, and costing a product before it exists.
- Demand planning and S&OP. The monthly cycle, the statistical forecast, the consensus plan and its sign-off.
- Operations and production. The working calendar, the production plan down to the work order by day and shift, sequencing and line performance.
- Supply chain and procurement. Stock policy, the purchase plan, supplier scorecards and risk, and landed cost.
- Human resources. Skills, rosters, workforce gaps, the hiring plan and the personnel budget.
- Finance and controlling. Product cost and variances, the budget, the forecast, month-end, consolidation and board reporting.
- Strategy. Brand diagnosis, initiatives, the long-range plan and market data.
- IT and security. Data connections and checks, single sign-on, access rights and a record of every change.
Need something else? Ask, and we'll build it to your scope.
Tell us what you need built.
Write with your business need and the software you have in mind, and we'll tell you how we would build it.
Tell us your business need and the software you have in mind — we want to hear it.
Or email support@orkestar.eu