Rapid technological advances in battery range, smart features, and safety, combined with urbanisation, regulatory shifts, and shared-mobility demand, pressure makers of personal transporters to balance affordability, performance, and differentiation.
Mordor Intelligence forecasts that the electric kick scooter market will grow from US$4.39 billion in 2025 to US$7.38 billion by 2030, intensifying the battle for market share in this dynamic landscape.
In this fast-growing electric kick scooter and micro-mobility sector, Segway-Ninebot faces intense competition from low-cost giants like Xiaomi and Yadea, premium innovators such as NIU Technologies, and agile players including Gotrax, Apollo, and Unagi.
Transformation centres on a unified foundation
As Segway-Ninebot expanded internationally, it encountered typical challenges of multinational operations: multiple SAP instances alongside non-SAP systems, inconsistent master data, heavily manual statutory reporting, and reconciliation difficulties. Limited reporting frequency created gaps between management and statutory views, hindering visibility and control.
The company acknowledged it needed to replace fragmented manual processes with an intelligent, automated operating model. This initiative spans statutory consolidation, management reporting, budgeting, and rolling forecasting across more than 50 legal entities worldwide.
A unified corporate performance management (CPM) was seen as a key element of its transformation and competitive advantage.
Segway-Ninebot partnered with Wolters Kluwer to implement the CPM foundation, building on the CCH Tagetik platform to address its challenges by delivering a single integrated platform with robust direct SAP connectivity and advanced integration capabilities.
The two-phase implementation has yielded impressive results, most notably a 45% reduction in the financial close cycle. Entity-level close now occurs at T+1; group statutory consolidation at T+3; management reporting at T+4; and end-to-end value chain reporting at T+5.
The platform processes nearly 10 million business data records annually, enabling detailed profitability analysis by SKU and customer, as well as automated elimination of complex unrealised profits.
Michael Chung, Greater China general manager of CCH Tagetik at Wolters Kluwer, highlighted the project’s significance: “By addressing the complexity of its global operating model, CCH Tagetik demonstrated clear strengths in multi-GAAP compliance, high volume data processing and sophisticated modelling. The result is a solid, trusted data foundation that enables faster closes, deeper insights and stronger global decision making.”
Enhanced CFO confidence through timeliness and reliability
The accelerated close cycle has profoundly impacted CFO-level decision-making. Previously, standalone monthly closes took until T+2, statutory consolidation until T+6, and management reporting until T+11. The new timelines eliminate manual processing and repeated reconciliations, providing the CFO with accurate, unified, and traceable data in near real time.
This dual improvement in reliability and timeliness strengthens business control. A single source for statutory and management reporting, with automatic tracing of differences, allows multi-dimensional oversight of overall operations, divisional profitability, and cost flows. Risk prediction has shifted from reactive to proactive, as analysis of millions of records identifies anomalies and cost overruns early.
Decisions benefiting most include monthly business reviews and divisional performance evaluations (enabled at T+4), rolling forecasts and adjustments (now monthly), cash control and financing, product/customer profitability strategies, and listed company compliance disclosures (statutory at T+3). Chung’s insights align with broader industry trends.
According to Gartner, leaders in financial close and consolidation solutions, such as CCH Tagetik, help organisations achieve greater accuracy and speed in complex environments.
Analyst perspectives reinforce these gains. Studies on financial close automation indicate average reductions in close cycle times of 30-50%, with significant error reductions and ROI often exceeding 300% in AI-powered or advanced platforms. While specific figures vary by implementation, Segway-Ninebot’s 45% improvement exemplifies the tangible value of unified systems.
Governance and controls: Standardisation across entities
A core achievement is the “unified CPM foundation,” which standardises master data and accounting practices.
Six major categories—organisation, chart of accounts, materials, customers, suppliers, and projects—were harmonised across multiple ERP systems in China and overseas. This resolves inconsistencies at the source and supports unified maintenance, mapping, and validation.
Accounting processes were standardised across more than 50 legal entities to address multi-GAAP requirements for domestic and overseas markets.
Automated online reconciliations and eliminations for intercompany items, including unrealised profits by SKU, legal entity, or division, have closed previous control gaps. The elimination scope now covers all spare parts, not just finished goods, improving accuracy and transparency.
An end-to-end control loop embeds permissions and logic into the system, reducing manual risks. Chung noted the platform’s strengths in these areas, which are replicable for other organisations.
The approach addresses common pain points for group enterprises with multiple entities, factories, or cross-border operations in manufacturing, technology, and retail.
Other companies can follow a phased path: master data standardisation first, then integration, statutory reporting, and finally management processes—adjusting granularity as needed.
This replicability aligns with industry analyses emphasising unified platforms for multi-entity reporting and compliance. Gartner Peer Insights and other reviews frequently highlight CCH Tagetik’s capabilities in consolidation and performance management.
Profitability analysis and market agility
Automation of nearly 10 million records has transformed profitability analysis from “not feasible” to precise drill-through. End-to-end tracking by SKU and customer now clearly captures revenue, costs, freight, rebates, and unrealised profits. One-click report generation replaces lengthy manual efforts, while transparent differences between management and financial data prevent misjudgements.
Value-chain visualisation by product and sales region supports refined decisions on portfolios, production, and channels. At the CFO level, monthly rolling forecasts—synchronised with actuals—enable rapid responses to market changes within 1-2 days.
Closed-loop integration with shared services and treasury systems links forecasting to expense control and cash planning, facilitating real-time adjustments to sales policies, production, and inventory.
Yang Hu, IT director at Segway-Ninebot, captured the impact: “The 45% reduction in our financial close cycle is a standout achievement, freeing our teams to focus on insight rather than reconciliation, while significantly improving the accuracy and reliability of profitability analysis and performance management.”
Looking ahead, Wolters Kluwer will support deeper adoption by focusing on advanced data quality, global optimisation, and use cases such as product lifecycle modelling. This positions Segway-Ninebot for sustained advantage in a dynamic market.
Industry reports underscore the broader shift. Nucleus Research and others have documented strong ROI from financial close automation, with benefits in efficiency, accuracy, and strategic focus—mirroring Segway-Ninebot’s outcomes.
Segway-Ninebot’s CCH Tagetik journey illustrates how a unified CPM platform delivers not just faster closes but a foundation for governance, insight, and agility. As global enterprises navigate complexity, solutions like this, backed by analyst recognition of CCH Tagetik’s leadership, offer a proven path forward.
