With the strapline “Tech Meets Sport,” Sport Alliance is a complex business that meets the digitization needs of more than 8,000 gyms and other sporting organizations across Germany. Its wide range of services includes cloud-based gym management software, comprehensive mobile apps, online gym membership acquisition, and gymsport financial services.
Formed by the merger of several smaller specialist businesses, Sport Alliance evolved to become a private, equity-owned company. Upon arriving at Sport Alliance in 2022, Chief Financial Officer Philipp Rusch found the business “on a strong growth trajectory, with sales increasing by 15% to 20% annually and further acquisitions on top of that.”
Taming the complexities of rapid growth.
But Rusch also found issues that needed to be addressed. “Such growth was catapulting us forward very strongly—but it was also creating significant challenges within our finance and HR functions. Finance in particular was a transformation case that was no longer fit for purpose: processes, structure, staffing, all these had to be addressed,” Rusch says. “And there was no functioning budget in place that could report cleanly against the organization.”
Rusch quickly decided that Workday Adaptive Planning would provide the core functionality needed, first to deliver the desired transformation in finance and then to provide the ongoing functionality that the fast-growing business would need in the future. “I decided to deploy Workday Adaptive Planning to solve both the supporting problem and the planning problem facing us,” Rusch says. “And the situation was so urgent that we must have had one of the shortest sales and implementation cycles on record!”
We must have had one of the shortest sales and implementation cycles on record!
—Philipp Rusch, CFO
“Minimally invasive” solution for speed and ease of use.
Rusch selected Workday Adaptive Planning primarily for its intuitive nature. “To use medical terminology, it is ‘minimally invasive.’ In other words, it provides an analytical layer that you can use to overlay the system with no need to touch the ERP or the HR systems,” Rusch says.
The intuitive nature of Workday Adaptive Planning helped speed up the deployment for Sports Alliance. “I had to present a plan to the board, but this would have gained nothing if it were not properly anchored in the organization, didn’t provide accountability, and couldn’t be adjusted live at an appropriate speed,” Rusch says.
Rusch signed the contract with Workday on 14 September 2022, and Workday Adaptive Planning was rolled out for the first planning round on 21 October. “The first budget created in Workday Adaptive Planning was released by the board on 2 December,” Rusch says.
“Not only that, we also successfully reported January actuals—we were moving at incredible speed,” Rusch adds. “But we absolutely had to, given the complexity of the environment we were operating in. This was an extremely important achievement for the business.”
New levels of transparency and accountability.
Having delivered Sport Alliance’s first budget using Workday Adaptive Planning, the team soon realized that Workday also increased the company’s transparency and accountability.
“Our business is very dynamic, so we had initially to make certain assumptions and planning suppositions as part of the planning process,” Rusch says. “These do not always turn out to be accurate in practice, especially in such volatile times, as the business might develop somewhat differently from the way that was predicted.”
With Workday Adaptive Planning, however, Rusch was easily able to make necessary adjustments in the light of further insight. “I promised the board that I would present them with a reforecast in March, and then with a properly updated budget,” Rusch says. “This was rolled out to our 25 department heads on 9 April.”
Rusch emphasizes the key role Workday Adaptive Planning played in the budgeting process. “Before deployment, it would simply not have been possible to build an accurate budget that was truly fit for purpose,” Rusch says. “I would especially like to thank the great team from our implementation partner, Kainos. We were almost brutal in enforcing what we wanted during the process, constantly asking ‘What is our minimum viable product?’ They were excellent throughout.”
Before the deployment of Workday Adaptive Planning, it would simply not have been possible to build an accurate budget that was truly fit for purpose.
—Philipp Rusch, CFO
Delegating responsibility for creating accurate scenarios.
Rusch also hoped that Workday Adaptive Planning would enable department heads throughout Sport Alliance to assume full responsibility for their spending.
“To do this, they need to know their budget clearly,” Rusch says. “They have to be able to create accurate scenarios—and that’s precisely what Workday Adaptive Planning is delivering for them and the business as a whole.”
Rusch wants to manage Sport Alliance in a unique way, and Workday Adaptive Planning makes that possible. “I have to have a clean and clear way of comparing budget with actual actions,” Rusch says. “Accountability is very important to me, and I want to be able to delegate full authority to department heads. They can then respond with their own budgets, and through Workday Adaptive Planning, I can dynamically adapt them via a simple user interface that we can manage for ourselves.”
Rusch also emphasizes the simplicity Workday Adaptive Planning brings to financial planning. “Personnel planning is role-specific. This means that based on individual roles, changes in the workforce and salaries can be planned simply on the basis of planned cohorts and hires,” Rusch says. “It’s extremely transparent and has massively streamlined the planning process.”