The Materna solution “Kompass” takes the pressure off managers through automated feedback, thereby providing better guidance in day-to-day work
Monday morning. A team leader opens her inbox. Between regular meetings, project coordination and operational matters, there is hardly any time left to open reports, check dashboards and analyse figures. And just at that moment, an email arrives containing an Excel capacity utilisation report with around 1,000 cells. Key information: keeping an eye on the team’s workload, identifying bottlenecks early on, setting priorities. But there’s no time to delve into the details.
This makes it all the more helpful when the email text already summarises the key information concisely. This is precisely where Materna’s internal controlling project, Kompass – short for ‘Commentary and Performance Assistant’ – comes in. The solution takes a deliberately different AI approach to traditional query systems. It is not about users actively asking a question of a system. Instead, Kompass ensures that relevant information is automatically processed, formulated in an understandable way, distributed in a targeted manner and, where necessary, accompanied by suggestions for action. In this way, AI becomes the link between data, systems and people.
Many organisations today generate large volumes of management information. Whether it’s capacity utilisation, performance or the resource situation, the figures are available in structured reports, dashboards or spreadsheets.
The challenge is this: either analyses are annotated with a great deal of manual effort, or extensive reports are sent out without any context. Given the large number of decision-makers within the organisation, this is a difficult balancing act.
The result: important contextualisation is missing or does not reliably reach all relevant recipients. Yet it is precisely this contextualisation that is crucial for turning figures into concrete calls to action.
With Kompass, Materna has developed a solution that automates precisely this step. Trained to analyse number-based reports, the application draws on structured data from the existing BI and reporting environment and uses it to generate short, precise text comments and suggestions for action. These are sent regularly by email to defined groups of recipients, such as managers with team responsibilities.
“It was important to us that the AI does not invent its own interpretations, but rather produces a meaningful and error-free summary. With Gemini, we have found the right AI for this. In Controlling, we continue to set the guidelines for the comments via code-based AI agents. When it comes to speed and scalability, the AI is unbeatable,”
says Stefan Litzki, Vice President of Group Planning & Reporting at Materna.
Technically, Kompass links three key levels. Firstly, existing reporting and controlling data is processed into a machine-readable format. Secondly, the AI generates consistent, comprehensible commentary from this data. Thirdly, the information is automatically distributed to defined recipient groups via existing communication channels.
It is precisely this integration that delivers the added value. Kompass is not a standalone AI tool, but is embedded within existing processes and system landscapes. The solution continues to utilise existing data sets, but supplements them with a new form of delivery. Information is not merely collected and visualised, but actively integrated into the workflow of those responsible.
For managers, this means less time spent searching, quicker orientation and a more solid basis for prioritisation. For the Controlling department, it means less manual effort in providing commentary and a significantly wider reach for their own information.
The added value is already evident in practice: regularly informing all stakeholders about capacity utilisation has helped to improve the approval rate for hours worked and thus bring forward the billing date. This has resulted in a six-figure impact on earnings, stemming in particular from interest effects arising from improved working capital.
“Kompass exemplifies the concrete benefits that AI can deliver when it addresses a real-world problem. The approach was deliberately launched on a manageable scale, but has the potential to have an impact far beyond the original use case,”
reports Stefan Litzki.
The solution can be applied, for example, to project and programme management, to budget and cost centre accountability, to KPI communication within management, or to operational early-warning systems. Even in data-intensive areas such as service, infrastructure or production, automated commentary can help to highlight relevant developments more quickly.
The key point here is that the added value does not arise solely from the data, nor solely from AI. It arises where the two are combined in such a way that information reaches the right people at the right time.
Many companies and public authorities have invested heavily in reporting, analytics and BI structures in recent years. Kompass demonstrates how these investments can be further enhanced. Often, it is not the knowledge within the system that is lacking, but the final step required to make it accessible in a user-friendly and actionable way.
AI-powered commentary bridges precisely this gap. It transforms key performance indicators into clear, actionable insights without relinquishing subject-matter control. In this way, a traditional performance report is transformed into an intelligent information system that not only informs but also provides guidance.
Kompass is therefore more than just an internal management accounting project. It is an example of how AI can make a tangible contribution to making data-driven management more effective in day-to-day operations: pragmatic, scalable and closely aligned with the needs of the people who work with this information.
