Businesses are taking longer than ever to complete their financial planning and analysis activities. These teams are being asked to do more with less - less time, fewer resources, lower budget. But that is achievable - with the right tool. To that end, we’ve compiled a list of FP&A case study examples with companies who solved time-consuming FP&A, saving hundreds of hours.
We’ll go over some FP&A best practices and how, with the right FP&A solutions and techniques, you can improve the speed, accuracy, and functionality of your financial planning and analysis tasks.
FP&A Challenge: Budgeting Takes Too Long
As mentioned above, businesses are spending more and more time on FP&A activities – especially budgeting and reporting, leaving no time to forecast.
While you would think that advances in technology would actually make these tasks faster, the wrong tools can in fact actually slow down your process.
Excel, for instance, is a great FP&A tool . . . at first. When you run a small business with only a single or handful of departments, revenue streams, and budgets, Excel, well, excels at helping you keep your financial data organized.
But as an organization grows in size, this FP&A process grows in complexity.
One or two teams balloon into a dozen different teams, each with different budgets and reporting processes. Add in additional revenue streams and you only further complicate the matter.
Let’s jump into our FP&A case study examples so we can better illustrate how the right FP&A software can solve your legacy financial planning and analysis issues.
FP&A Case Study #1: Communication Services for the Deaf
The non-profit Communication Services for the Deaf found that its team was spending an enormous amount of time tracking down data, scrolling through thousands of Excel rows, and using its finance team’s valuable time to perform repetitive tasks which could all be better completed by an algorithm.
And with the right FP&A solution, they were able to reduce the time it took to complete their annual budgeting process in half.
They accomplished this through automating the process with FP&A software – read more here.
FP&A Challenge: Insufficient Planning and Forecasting Capabilities
When using your financial data to plan and forecast, as your organization transitions from a smaller outfit to a larger company, Excel again becomes unsustainable due to the frequent need to copy data over and over again across multiple what-if scenarios and other forecasting efforts.
In order to leverage financial data, in other words, to gain valuable insights that can then translate into effective and accurate forecasting models, what’s needed is a centralized deposit of all the relevant data that displays information in real-time – which is one of the FP&A challenges that is impossible to overcome without the right solution.
FP&A Case Study #2: MedVet
MedVet has a number of emergency and specialty veterinary hospitals designed to keep pets feeling healthy. During the pandemic, even with a difficult economic climate, MedVet was able to add dozens of more hospitals. And this growth was helped by their FP&A software platform, which cut budgeting cycles in half, made their FP&A activities scalable, and were able to leverage long-term planning and forecasting using accurate, real-time data.
MedVet was so impressed with their FP&A solution, they chose to give a webinar detailing their experience with their FP&A software, Limelight, which you can watch here. Read more here.
FP&A Challenge: Lack of Automation Capabilities
Many FP&A teams – experts in finance with troves of knowledge on how to take financial data and turn it into actionable insights that increase ROI - spend far too much time sifting through spreadsheets and wrangling teams to send in their data.
This is an inefficient use of their time, leading to productivity losses at your organization; this is one of the biggest FP&A challenges, in fact.
FP&A Case Study #3: Triple Crown Sports
Triple Crown Sports had its finance team sifting through spreadsheet after spreadsheet to ensure data integrity and consolidate all the information - taking them away from higher ROI FP&A activities.
But with FP&A software, they were able to consolidate over one hundred spreadsheets into a single, cohesive, easily accessible FP&A platform and workspace.
By automating data consolidation, collection, and updating, Triple Crown Sports created a connected workspace that restores your experts’ time, allowing them to take on and complete more productive FP&A activities.
This led to a minimization of manual tasks and restored hundreds of hours to their teams. Read more here.
FP&A Challenge: Dozens of Budget Reviews
Reviewing budgets can be a time-consuming, unnecessary process. One of the main reasons for this is that these spreadsheets are disjointed or incomplete caused by many teams inputting data at different times and creating different budget versions. This then necessitates data integrity verification, which in turn calls for multiple budget reviews. And every time a discrepancy is discovered, this can impact multiple figures, thus resulting in further budget reviews after the initial one is complete to ensure the changes didn’t impact the overall numbers.
FP&A Case Study #4: GSW Manufacturing
GSW Manufacturing often faced nearly 30 budget reviews when preparing its budgets. Now, however, the company only has to create a single budget. As you’d imagine, this reduces frustration and saves the valuable time of its FP&A team.
When calculating intercompany eliminations and roll-ups, the corporate team would review the budget several times during a cycle to verify data integrity.
By implementing the right FP&A solution, it was able to ensure both data integrity and accuracy, and make smarter business decisions with its financial data. Through that process, the company was able to uncover over $400,000 in hidden costs. Read more here.
Solve Your FP&A Challenge with Limelight FP&A Software
FP&A challenges can be time-consuming and frustrating - but you don’t have to suffer through them. Instead, you can leverage Limelight cloud FP&A software to totally eliminate legacy issues that have plagued your FP&A teams.
Work with an FP&A platform that supports your budgeting, forecasting, planning, and analysis activities so they are carried out faster - and more accurately - than ever. With our sophisticated FP&A platform supporting your business, you can reduce budgeting and reporting times by 50% while uncovering hundreds of thousands in hidden costs, reduce budget reviews, and give your team its time back.
Book a demo to see our FP&A platform in action.
