Walki uses artificial intelligence to improve reporting and analytics

Walki in brief

Walki is a growing international group that designs and manufactures packaging and technical materials. Walki is organized in three business areas (consumer packaging, industrial packaging and technical materials) and has operations in twelve countries. Walki has production facilities in Finland, Germany, Belgium, Spain, France, Poland, the UK and China.

An inspiring example of the use of artificial intelligence

We previously told how Walki has implemented Anaplan to support its operational planning and decision-making. To build Anaplan into a more powerful tool, we set out together to come up with clear use cases where generative AI can help them.

"AI will play a major role in the future, so it's important to be involved from the start and understand the opportunities and also the limitations it brings. The first experiences will help us to realize new applications and use data in new ways," says Walki's Head of Business Controlling, Filip Björndahl.

Walki's journey is an inspiring example for other companies in the early stages of AI adoption. Integrating AI into an existing data platform can seem like an exciting step, but Walki has shown that it can also be an accessible, low-threshold process. We got the project off to an easy start and the results came quickly.

"We have a long-standing relationship with twoday and the twoday team has been great in supporting and providing us with new development ideas along the way, so it was easy to get involved in this project too," says Björndahl.

Walki's starting points and objectives for the use of AI

Management reporting was chosen as the focus of the project. There was a clear need for more consistent and efficient reporting and a better understanding of the reasons for the differences between budgeted and actual results.

Our aim was to find answers to questions such as:

• What are the main drivers and variables (volume, sales, variable and fixed costs)?
• Which business lines and factories account for the largest differences?

Walki has several sites across Europe, which are reporting on a monthly basis. The starting point was how to produce standardized country-specific reports on the income statement from an EBITDA bridge perspective. In other words, how volume, changes in raw material prices and material prices, for example, have a significant impact on the result.

Putting generative AI in practice

"We integrated generative AI into Anaplan to analyze the income statement and produce summarized reports from different levels of the organization. Users can also ask more specific questions about the data in Anaplan. For example, if volumes change, they can ask which customers and products have contributed to the change," says Henrikki Lehtola, senior consultant at twoday.

The higher the level of detail, the more useful the reports become: for example, a group-level report can show which sites and business lines have been the biggest drivers of change. The most significant drivers are identified from large data sets and presented in text format. This allows the user to drill down further into the data. This will harmonize reporting across all countries of operation and allow end-users to complete the data where necessary.

More time to analyze the figures

The app has lowered the barrier for Walki's experts to use AI because it is easy to use and provides useful information. It speeds up the end-user's access to the right figures for analysis and reduces the need to search for data themselves. The app provides ready-made inputs that allow for a faster response. Put simply: the app converts financial figures into text and explains the reasons behind the figures, while providing insights.

"AI has automated report generation and reduced unnecessary duplication. It gives us a head start in knowing more precisely what to analyze, and we don't have to start from scratch every month," says Björndahl.

The project has not only been a technical challenge for the Walki's experts, but has also increased their understanding of what AI can really achieve and where its limits lie. The experience and results have brought a better understanding of the data needed and enabled standardization of reporting, producing consistent and complete reports.

Towards greater use of artificial intelligence

The lessons and results of the project have provided Walki with resources for wider use of AI. Björndahl sees the project as a starting point for deeper work on AI:

"The project has reinforced the idea that using AI is not a choice, but something you have to participate in. The sooner the benefits of AI are understood, the sooner we can build the necessary underlying systems."

According to Björndahl, it is particularly important to emphasize change leadership in the early stages of AI adoption. You need to be able to drive in new ways of working and justify the benefits of AI to the whole organization. It's important to get people on board and to understand the benefits, both in their own work and across the organization.

"When someone asks me after this project if we want to increase or decrease the use of AI, I would definitely say increase," sums up Björndahl.

AI is developing at a rapid pace, and Walki's example shows how a single application can shape the future - not just of a single office or team, but the strategic direction of an entire organization.