House of HR is a dynamic, fast-growing Belgian HR services provider, managing a network of over 50 brands, including its flagship brand, Accent Jobs. With operations across Europe, the company is a leader in specialized talent solutions and engineering and consulting services. House of HR employs over 6000 people, is helping 73000 people at getting at job and generates €3.4 billion in annual revenue. The company operates a decentralized model, with individual finance departments and CFOs for each of its brands, leading to complex reporting and financial processes.

As House of HR rapidly expanded, its finance and reporting systems became increasingly difficult to scale. The company faced several challenges:

• A complex structure with 10 PowerHouses, 50 brands, and over 250 legal entities.
• Outdated financial systems that were no longer suited for the organization’s size and growing reporting demands.
• The need for a more efficient, flexible, and integrated planning & reporting solution to cater to the long term strategy of the group.
• Need for an EPM tool which is able to harmonize data from various ERP systems (every entity has its own ERP environment)

The company’s previous system was initially implemented for a smaller business but was no longer able to handle the scale, flexibility, and automation needed for HoHR’s evolving operations.

To address these challenges, House of HR turned to Anaplan, a cloud-based planning and performance management platform, and Fluence for consolidation and disclosure management. The goal was to build a modern, integrated & finance-owned solution that could provide real-time insights, streamline budgeting, forecasting, and reporting, and support strategic decision-making.

1. Flexibility and Integration: Anaplan’s flexible cloud architecture seamlessly integrated with House of HR’s existing systems & Fluence
2. Efficiency Gains: The decentralized financial structure of House of HR was a significant consideration. Anaplan enabled each PowerHouse to perform budgeting and reporting directly in the platform, eliminating the need for manual data entry and consolidating all data in one centralized location.
3. Finance Owned: no dependency on IT or future external support
4. Real-time Reporting: Anaplan transformed House of HR’s reporting process. Monthly reporting, which previously involved compiling data from multiple Excel files into PowerPoint presentations, is now automated with just one click.
5. Scalable Financial Planning: Anaplan’s driver-based models allowed for seamless budget planning across the decentralized units, enabling better alignment with corporate goals.
6. Faster close & disclose process: Fluence’s consolidation engine facilitates House of HR to faster & more easily integrate acquisitions. Via its user friendly interface it allows end-user to manage the consolidation process in a more efficient manner. FluenceXL enables the end-users to generate real-time connected reporting

House of HR embarked on its Anaplan journey in March 2023 with an official start of the implementation in July 2023. The implementation was fast-tracked with the first group-wide FP&A model ready by January 2024. The company worked closely with its implementation partners, Ufinity Technology and Delaware, who provided valuable insights and guidance throughout the process. Due to the scope of this project (implementation of Anaplan, Fluence and a financial data platform, a mix of experience was needed to guide the project towards success). Ufinity Technology, providing the senior solution experts on Anaplan, in combination with Delaware, providing senior project management & data integration expertise, was a recipe for success. The in-house involvement from House of HR in the project was key to the quality & adoption of the finance platform.

House of HR’s in-house model builder was key to the project’s success as he was involved from the start in writing user stories, building the models, and ensuring the system was ready for use. By September 2024, House of HR had fully transitioned to Anaplan, replacing the previous system and is having the internal knowledge to further expand their Anaplan/Fluence environment.

• Budgeting: Anaplan replaced the traditional Excel-based budgeting process with a more streamlined, automated driver-based model. This saved time and reduced errors by eliminating manual data entry and linking budgets directly to the group model.
• Reporting: Previously, House of HR’s finance team spent days preparing monthly reports. Now, they can generate PowerPoint presentations with a single click, freeing up significant time for analysis and decision-making.

House of HR attributes the success of its implementation to several factors:

1. Stakeholder Buy-in: All key stakeholders, including CFOs and finance teams across the PowerHouses, were involved in the decision-making process, ensuring alignment and commitment to the project.
2. Choosing the Right Partners: Working with implementation partners who understood the company’s needs and could provide flexible, adaptive solutions was crucial.
3. Internal Expertise: The internal model builder enabled House of HR to take ownership of the platform and reduce reliance on external support, accelerating the learning curve.

With Anaplan now firmly in place, House of HR is focusing on optimizing its use of the platform. The finance team plans to start using the rolling forecast functionality of Anaplan and evolve towards continuous budgeting processes. The company is already building further on the budget & forecast model by extending this with a cash forecasting & treasury model.

As House of HR looks toward the future, the company remains committed to evolving its finance processes and leveraging Anaplan’s powerful capabilities to stay ahead of its competition and prepare for long-term growth.