Hospitality Staffing Solutions (HSS) set itself an aggressive goal of growing top-line sales 10-15%. That wasn’t great news for its finance team. “I inherited an Excel nightmare,” says Kevin Murphy, senior vice president of finance at HSS. “We had a lot of spreadsheets that were gigantic, with many tabs, many links, and as we worked through them, the links were broken. A lot of time was just spent trying to make sure our reporting was accurate.”
Once they added Workday Adaptive Planning, the finance team was able to sparkle. They dramatically reduced the monthly close and reporting cycle while slashing their annual planning process from six months to six weeks, gaining back 18 weeks of critical staff time to perform value-added tasks like scenario analysis. “The role of finance at HSS has really been elevated, especially in the past year,” says Murphy. “The different things we’re involved in, we’re not just an accounting team just shooting numbers out the door. We really add value to the different team members, to the management team, to the leadership team, the board, to help them gain insight into what makes our company tick.”
Workday Adaptive Planning has given a lot of time back to my life. The initial plan took over six months and went through the holiday season. Now I’m actually able to enjoy the holiday season with my family and am spending more time doing things that mean something to the company when at work, rather than just reporting and issuing outdated financial statements.
Senior Vice President of Finance
Challenges.
- Cumbersome spreadsheets. Struggled to manage multiple Excel spreadsheets for budget P&L, revenue, headcount, and reporting that required more than 130 tabs, making the annual budget a six-month slog.
- Slow closing cycle. Held back by a monthly close cycle that lasted nearly three weeks, often spilling into the next reporting period.
- Manual data entry. Time-consuming data entry process left little time left for reviewing and analyzing data.
Results.
- Faster budgeting time. Reduced the annual budget process from six months to six weeks, freeing time to conduct strategic tasks like profitability analysis and what-if scenarios.
- Faster monthly close. Reduced reporting and monthly close from 21 days to six days with real-time integration with Great Plains.
- Better decisions. Increased access to real-time KPIs, helping the company make strategic decisions and achieve corporate revenue and net operating income goals two years in a row and running.