IT budget cycle cut from three months to two weeks, replacing a spreadsheet-based system.
Leading financial services group.
Technology planning still happens in spreadsheets, and they are out of date the day they are circulated. These are the problems planners encounter.
The workbook goes out to forty budget owners and comes back forty different ways. Nobody can say who changed what, or whether the version in the meeting is the one that was submitted.
The roll-up across cost centers, entities and currencies happens by hand, under deadline, from whichever versions came back last. Errors creep in.
A what-if ask is a complete new build, not a governed copy of the plan adjusted for the new reality.
IT plans in towers and services. Finance needs cost centers and GL accounts. Every cycle, someone attempts to translate between the two.
So variance becomes a monthly project instead of an automated report.
The test of any planning tool is how much rework it leaves behind.
Corporate-level cost centers and accounts with plan versions side by side, commentary on material movements, and a last-minute change when the total group numbers don’t tell the right story.
Confidence in the number, because it reflects both strategy and reality, and a clear story of what moved since the last plan and why. Board packs and dashboards show plan, budget and actual, with drill-down behind every movement.
To be the bridge between IT and finance, not the translator. Planning at the level technology really runs, by service, contract, license and role, so the numbers are accurate, not estimated, and budget owners are accountable for them.
A quick way to enter and adjust their numbers, with inline edits, an Excel add-in and a submission that goes somewhere, so planning takes less of their time.
A plan that reflects where they’re taking technology, with every choice accounted for and a clear view of how the strategy gets delivered.
Confidence comes from planning on the same foundation as your actuals, at the level technology really runs.
Budgets, forecasts and what-if scenarios across financials, capex, contracts and workforce, with approvals, versioning and commentary in one governed cycle, so every number has an owner and a history.
Actual against budget in one view, so every variance points to a risk to manage or an opportunity to take, and leadership knows where to invest and where to hold back.
A workforce plan grounded in where people’s time really goes, so leadership knows whether it has the capacity to deliver the strategy and where to hire, redeploy or hold back.
Cloud spend tied to the growth it supports, so the plan shows where to scale, where to commit and where to hold back, without the surprises.
Planning templates shape themselves to the business, with up to 30 dimensions, date and numeric fields, and fields that become mandatory only when they matter. Linked fields filter each other as people plan, so every line has the right level of detail without slowing anyone down.
Budget owners load and plan in the currencies they work in, and multi-currency uploads land in a single plan. Group plans come together without anyone converting numbers by hand.
Plan capex, contracts and workforce alongside operating cost, in one plan, and build it bottom-up from price and quantity. When volumes or rates change, the plan moves with them, so the numbers reflect what technology really costs to run and to change.
Budget and actuals are built on the same foundation, so every comparison is like for like. Spot drift early, understand why, and decide whether to invest, hold back or reforecast.
Copy the plan, lock in the actuals to date and roll the rest forward. A 6+6 or 9+3 reforecast combines what has happened with what’s still to come, without rebuilding anything, so the outlook is always current.
Budget owners submit, reviewers approve and every change is recorded, from the first draft to the final plan. The cycle runs the same way every time, so every number has an owner, a history and a sign-off finance can rely on.
14 countries, 600,000+ outlets
20+ budget workbooks consolidated, forecasting cycle time down 30%, traceability up to 85%.
Global bottling agent.
The TBM taxonomy gives the plan the same towers and services as the actuals, which is what makes plan against actual a single report. In MOTEF, the plan layer is where technology FP&A sits.
