Customer Story
German soccer club KSC uses Lucanet as an easy way to create integrated plans, scenarios and forecasts.
Karlsruher SC is the largest sports club in the city of Karlsruhe and its surrounding region in southwest Germany. Its more than 11,000 members also make it one of the biggest sports associations anywhere in the country. KSC GmbH & Co. KGaA is responsible for business operations related to the club's professional soccer team.
Lucanet has helped KSC achieve a higher level of professionalism. It provides high-quality planning data and gives us a really easy way to create integrated plans, scenarios and forecasts.
Philip Hirzel
Head of Finance and HR
KSC GmbH & Co. KGaA is responsible for business operations related to Karlsruher SC's professional soccer team. In the past, Philip Hirzel (head of finance and HR) and his own team used Excel to handle their financial planning and reporting. Like a striker going through a dry spell, however, they found themselves putting in a lot of effort that ultimately wasn’t rewarded. The team spent a great deal of time producing results that were rife with errors and their liquidity planning didn’t offer the necessary level of detail. Meanwhile, speed, flexibility and flawless figures are essential to KSC's business, as Philip Hirzel explains: “One of our biggest challenges lies in making sure we can carry out highly detailed planning not only quickly and clearly, but with no mistakes and the ability to compare it against our actuals up to the current day.”
That meant the club's need for a professional solution for financial and liquidity planning was constantly growing. Based on recommendations from other companies and its partnership with the auditing firm RSM Ebner Stolz, KSC became acquainted with Lucanet, which quickly convinced the club to implement its software.
Lucanet has ushered in an era of more professional and centralized financial management at KSC. The software's usability and the high-quality planning data it offers enable the club to generate integrated planning, scenarios and forecasts, along with licensing documentation for the DFL (Germany's soccer league).
Taking a look at KSC's liquidity planning, plenty of major progress is evident: What was once prone to errors and barely comparable to the club's actual figures is now accurate down to the last decimal point, which has put KSC's financial team in a position to run reliable, up-to-date comparisons against their actuals whenever required. Key strategic decisions can now be made proactively on the basis of planning data that is accurate up to the present day.
KSC's reporting is now ready for the big leagues, as well. Now generated automatically by the club's Lucanet software, it delivers detailed comparisons of planning and actual information, along with clearly arranged summaries of the most important findings.
According to Hirzel, KSC's transition to Lucanet has been a complete success. “Lucanet has helped KSC achieve a higher level of professionalism. We see the added value it offers in going about our everyday work and communicating with our stakeholders,” he explains. “I really have to thank RSM Ebner Stolz, as their professional support and advice was vital in our successful implementation of the software.”