How air up® keeps financial planning flowing as the business scales globally

At a glance

• Replaced an Excel-based FP&A setup with a centralized, scalable planning platform
  
• Improved data reliability, transparency, and stakeholder alignment across the business
  
• Built a fully integrated driver-based planning model covering P&L, balance sheet, and cash flow
  
• Enabled real-time impact analysis and scenario planning across finance and operations
  
• Empowered finance teams with greater autonomy and long-term ownership of their models 
  

Scaling financial planning beyond spreadsheets

Founded in 2018 and headquartered in Munich, air up® is a fast-growing consumer brand reinventing how people experience hydration. Its innovative drinking bottle system flavors water through scent, enabling healthy, sugar-free hydration for more than 15 million users across 14+ countries. Driven by continuous innovation, air up® is shaping a more sustainable and health-conscious approach to everyday drinking.

With a fast-scaling consumer business and growing operational complexity, the company’s finance function needed to evolve just as quickly.

Until recently, FP&A at air up® relied heavily on Excel. While familiar, this setup was increasingly strained by the volume of data, the number of business dimensions, and the manual effort required to keep plans up to date. A significant portion of the finance team’s time was spent on manual data entry and updates, leaving less room for analysis and strategic decision-making.

As the business scaled, this approach became a constraint. air up® needed a more dynamic, integrated FP&A platform, one that could support growth, improve reliability, and provide leadership with timely, trustworthy insights.

Choosing a platform built for transparency and growth

Recognizing the limits of spreadsheets, air up® set out to modernize its planning environment. The goal was clear: reduce manual workload, improve data quality, and give the business the agility to make faster, better-informed decisions.

Pigment was selected as the platform to support this shift. Its integrated approach to planning, analytics, and budgeting offered a clear path away from fragmented models toward a single source of truth.

A single stream of insight across the business

The project began in October 2023 and was delivered through a close collaboration between air up® and implementation partner valantic. A co-build approach allowed air up®’s team to actively participate throughout the development process, ensuring knowledge transfer and long-term ownership from the outset.

Together, the teams designed a comprehensive FP&A model covering core financial statements, Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow, alongside CapEx, OpEx, demand planning, revenue planning, logistics, COGS, and workforce planning. Multiple data sources were integrated, including accounting, sales, and HR systems.

At the heart of the solution is a driver-tree model. Changes to revenue, demand, or cost drivers automatically flow through to financial statements, enabling real-time impact analysis and faster scenario testing. This level of automation significantly reduced manual effort while improving consistency and auditability.

From valantic’s perspective, usability and future readiness were central to the design.

For air up®, the results were immediate: faster reporting cycles, higher data quality, and a centralized financial hub that supports collaboration across teams.

Designed to scale planning sustainably

Today, Pigment serves as the foundation of air up®’s FP&A operations. Finance teams benefit from a single, accessible source of truth, while business stakeholders gain clearer visibility into performance and trade-offs.

The platform’s flexibility has made it easier to add new dimensions, adapt models as the business evolves, and support more sophisticated scenario planning. Just as importantly, the co-build approach has equipped air up® to maintain and enhance the model independently over time.

What began as a move away from spreadsheets has become a broader shift in how financial planning supports the business. With Pigment, air up® has turned FP&A into a strategic capability, one that brings structure, transparency, and confidence as the company continues to grow.