A10 Networks knows big data. In fact, it’s what the company does best: provide high-performance networking solutions for leading industries. The tech firm required the same comprehensive performance for its budgeting and planning. Upgrading to Workday Adaptive Planning provided much needed insight into metrics, and the subsequent results—accelerated processes, detailed visual analytics, and nimble forecasting—brought about a more thorough approach to data management. In turn, that robust reporting and increased efficiency fueled an entire organizational shift to a more data-driven, strategic culture.
With Workday Adaptive Planning, we’re able to create more accurate financial forecasts by employing real-time data analysis on key business trends, and then ascertain what those trends mean for our business.
Director of FP&A
Challenges.
Desired a comprehensive solution for planning and decision-making
Lacked deeper insights into trends and forecast assumptions
Required understanding of bookings and gross margins trends early in the quarter
Results.
Finance team’s workflow process reduced by three days per month
Critical daily metrics shared faster and more easily with internal decision-makers for course-correcting anything trending off-target
One-click refresh of all monthly board decks and financial reporting reduced a full-day exercise down to minutes
Streamlining processes frees up 36 days annually for deeper analysis.
The A10 finance team has used Workday Adaptive Planning to cut three days off of their workload each month—by automating daily key performance indicator (KPI) analysis and reporting and accelerating the company’s monthly financial close cycle.
More time was saved when they integrated their Oracle ERP system and Workday Adaptive Planning for revenue modeling. The connector automatically inputs bookings, shipments, and gross margin data into the team’s financial models within Workday Adaptive Planning. It’s a technology upgrade that made three very impactful improvements:
- Heavily reduce data entry errors
- Elimination of time-consuming tasks involving extracting and consolidating data
- A single version of the truth for performance against financial metrics for employees worldwide
"With Workday Adaptive Planning, we’re able to create much more accurate financial forecasts by employing real time data analysis on key business trends, and then ascertain what those trends mean for our business," said A10 Networks Director of FP&A Zoby Shaikh, explaining how the finance team is accelerating performance management. "As a result, we have much better visibility into what these trends depict regarding our prior assumptions, and thus how we should revise these assumptions versus what we planned. Our daily gross margin tracking allows us to optimally structure transactions throughout the quarter."
In addition to tracking bookings, shipments, and backlog data, A10 Networks deployed Workday Adaptive Planning at all of its worldwide locations to accelerate a wide range of processes, including:
- Monthly financial reporting cycles
- Personnel planning
- OPEX forecasting
- Annual planning and budgeting
Dashboards for everyone.
When the finance team incorporated the Workday Adaptive Planning visual analytics dashboards, Shaikh was able to lead an entire organizational shift to a more data-driven culture that enforced close and regular monitoring of key business drivers against financial performance goals.
"We need to understand where bookings and gross margins are trending early in the quarter," said Shaikh. "Workday Adaptive Planning enables us to easily analyze these critical daily metrics, and share that analysis with internal decision-makers so that they can course-correct anything that’s trending off target."
The A10 team will integrate data from multiple sources such as Oracle, Salesforce.com, Marketo, and Workday next to provide a centralized view of all key performance indicators specific to managers in sales, marketing, and HR, in addition to the entire executive team. "Workday Adaptive Planning is fast becoming our one-stop shop for all metrics across our business," said Shaikh.
Our daily gross margin tracking allows us to optimally structure transactions throughout the quarter.
Director of FP&A