Amid rapid growth, Salas O’Brien chose to evolve its financial processes with Planful. The US engineering group, present in more than 100 offices across North America and comprising more than 5,000 employees, notably had to address an increasingly complex organization following several acquisitions. Today, the platform enables it to centralize consolidation, reporting and, progressively, financial planning.
Financial organization challenged by growth
Salas O’Brien operates in mechanical, electrical and structural engineering, serving more than 20 industries. Its development was accompanied by an increasing number of entities and financial data to consolidate. In particular, the company integrated more than ten companies in a single year.
Before Planful was implemented, a significant portion of the financial processes still relied on Excel. Planning was carried out manually, and the teams also used a consolidation tool that no longer fully met the needs associated with international operations.
Managing multiple currencies, intercompany eliminations and the need to rapidly produce a consolidated view of the group thus became important challenges for the finance function.
A platform for consolidating and analyzing data
Salas O’Brien was looking for a solution capable of supporting the entire financial cycle, from consolidation to reporting, and progressively extending to planning and analysis.
Planful has notably enabled the company to manage multi-entity and multi-currency operations. Finance teams can also analyze data across different dimensions, such as entities, projects, customers, service lines and end markets.
This approach is designed to provide a single database for meeting different reporting needs, without having to multiply specific reports for each operating unit.
Continuity with the tools used by teams
The integration of Planful Spotlight for Microsoft 365 also played a role in the platform selection. Employees can continue working in Excel and PowerPoint while relying on data from Planful.
For finance teams, this continuity helps minimize disruption to existing working practices. Presentations can in particular be dynamically populated from financial data, making them easier to update.
The company also replaced an approach based on reports built separately for each activity with a standardized reporting system that can be distributed to all teams.
Faster reporting after close
The initial results can be seen in particular in the speed at which financial information is produced. Salas O’Brien reports having reduced the time required to produce its reports after the monthly close by one to two days.
This time saving enables teams to deliver data to executives more quickly and devote more effort to analysis.
Beyond operational performance, the company also highlights a shift in platform adoption. Some experienced employees who had previously been reluctant to use new systems have started creating their own reports in Planful.
AI as the next step
The deployment of Planful will now gradually extend to other areas of the finance function, particularly budgeting and workforce planning.
Artificial intelligence is also among the opportunities being considered by Salas O’Brien. In particular, the company wants to explore its use across the different stages of its financial processes, from consolidation to planning.
For Salas O’Brien, the challenge therefore goes beyond simply automating reporting. Above all, it is about enabling finance to reduce the time spent preparing data and strengthen its role as a strategic partner to management.
With Planful, Salas O’Brien is therefore seeking to support its growth without allowing the complexity of its organization to slow down its finance function.
source: Planful
