DataPartner

Key Facts

Company name

Myllykoski Corporation http://www.myllykoski.com/

About the company

Myllykoski Continental, Myllykoski North America and Myllykoski Paper make up the Myllykoski Group, which has mills in Germany, Finland, Switzerland and the United States.

Industry

Forest & Paper

Products

The Group products - wood-containing and recycled fibrebased uncoated and coated printing papers, as well as newsprint, are trusted worldwide by printers, publishers and mail order companies. The Myllykoski Group is highly focused and ranks number three in production of SC in the world. In the production of LWC paper the Myllykoski Group is in the top four. The combined annual production capacity of this family of paper mills is roughly 2.5 million tonnes.

Turnover

1 399 million EUR (2003)

Employment

4000 (2003)

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"Since 1997, all companies of Myllykoski Group and Rhein Papier have gradually acquired Invest for Excel®."

Invest for Excel® serves finance experts well, but also others

Myllykoski used Invest for Excel® software even prior to implementing the certified quality system. Invest for Excel® serves well employees from different areas of organisation – for example production personnel, financial managers or ultimate decision makers.

"When our company’s data processing was transferred to the Windows environment, and we began to use the Excel spreadsheet application, we wanted an easy-to-use tool for calculating investments. As skills of our staff from production departments varied, investment calculation was seen as a job for financial experts.", says Sakari Vainio, Finance Director at Myllykoski Paper Oy.

"A suitable software application with principles that everybody could understand, was required. If calculations were confined to the financial management staff, the knowledge of other employees might have been wasted", Vainio continues.

Basic requirements were fulfilled

Myllykoski wanted to ensure that the software supplier would render support services and would continue software development. Further objectives were:

• Extending the co-operation in-house,
• Understanding the principles of investment calculation, and
• The functional reliability of the chosen application.

Aiming at a reliable and standardized tool

Myllykoski needed a tool suitable for calculating both small and large projects. Sensitivity calculation, based on variables that are altered according to the changing circumstances, is one of the winning features of the software.

Invest for Excel® was applied to the investment calculation procedure without difficulty. Existing Excel calculations and graphics could be linked as references. The investment proposal was easy to prepare and print out. There was also place for personal comments and notes, when needed.

"The key users and the Development Unit were involved in the software implementation from the beginning. As soon as we became convinced that the application was suitable for us, we decided unanimously to order Invest for Excel®. It was important to standardize calculations and make them accessible via the local network without great cost", Sakari Vainio states.

Invest for Excel® would remain an essential investment calculation tool in the future

Invest for Excel® is easy to use. When it was first installed and taken into use in 1997, one day training was sufficient for the new users. Changes in the organisation pose no problems, as the knowledge is transferred to new users during internal training. Myllykoski staff has confidence in the software. It was decided that Invest for Excel® would remain an essential investment calculation tool in the future. The German and Swiss subsidiaries of the Myllykoski Group have also acquired Invest for Excel.

"When the same model is used corporation-wide, discussions regarding principle assumptions or impenetrable jungle of rules can be avoided. Scenarios can easily be simulated to demonstrate the effect of variables on the end result. It will be easier for decision-makers to see whether investment is feasible. Especially in large projects requiring several versions of calculations and comparison of alternatives, Invest for Excel® is an excellent tool", Vainio continues.

Training

"I think that Invest for Excel® is perfectly designed for training purposes. Our staff understands the dependence relationships far easier than reading theory in a textbook. Invest for Excel® would, in fact, be an excellent educational tool for universities or institutes of commercial and technical education", Vainio comments.

Since 1997, all companies of Myllykoski Group and Rhein Papier acquired Invest for Excel. Currently, the software is used in:

Myllykoski North America, Myllykoski Continental, Myllykoski Paper Oy, Madison Paper Industries, Madison Paper Company Alsip, Lang Papier, Utzenstorf Papier, MD Plattling, MD Dachau, MD Albbruck, Sunila Oy, Rhein Papier.

Source: www.myllykoski.com (Dec. 2005)

Copyright 1999 Datapartner Oy. Last update in 2005. All rights reserved.