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Extending planning horizons through core reporting

Executive Summary

  • Effective strategic planning requires extending planning horizons beyond being instinctive to collating key data sources which provide a clear understanding of the current and expected near term financial performance. 
  • The information to enable this understanding required connecting the CRM and invoicing platforms across recently acquired business units in a self-serve data platform with forecasting capabilities.
  • This platform enabled performance tracking for the current and near future, moving our client beyond instinctive planning to informed, proactive decision making.

The Challenge

A subscription and payments SaaS business operating in European markets with ARR in the €10 – 50m range did not have KPIs readily available to support decision making. Numerous bolt-on acquisitions had led to disparate data with no single source of truth. Their growth plan depended on intercompany cross-sell initiatives but the lack of centralised reporting to track progress caused limited visibility to key decision makers. The client wanted to move from an instinctive planning horizon to being able to use forecasted financial performance to support decision making. The specific challenges included: 

  • Disparate reporting systems: Different source systems across the acquisitions were not connected, slowing decision-making and reducing confidence. 
  • KPI gaps: Cross-sell between business units had not yet been defined or calculated, making tracking of strategic priorities difficult. 
  • Book-to-bill inefficiencies: Onboarding delays and inaccuracies in revenue predictions caused a lack of clarity in understanding of when or if booked revenue would land. 
  • Limited forecasting capabilities: Lacking reliable forecasted ARR beyond booked ARR meant blind spots in strategic planning. 

Figure 1: The four planning horizons enabled by data platform capabilities.

Our approach

To overcome these challenges, we built a self-serve data platform for the client which would support our client in increasing their planning horizon. We leveraged our data capability and reporting experience by focussing on the following activities:

  1. Understanding the Client’s Needs
    We began with engaging the C-suite, finance, and sales operational leads to understand their pain points. These pain points were collated and used to design the reporting tool.
  2. Data Assessment and Process Recommendations
    Our team evaluated the level of detail available within the client’s existing data systems to perform a feasibility assessment of the reporting tool design. Where data was unavailable, process improvements were outlined to enable more granular reporting in the future.
  3. Reconciliation and Data Quality Improvement
    A rigorous reconciliation process resulted in the creation of a clean customer ARR cube. This process corrected historic manual errors, particularly in invoice dates, and significantly improved data quality.

Outcome

The introduction of automated reporting capabilities alongside a self-service customer ARR cube enabled the client to incorporate more information into their decision-making process by:

  • Understanding the Present
    • A single source of truth to access KPIs such as GRR and NRR provided a view of the current landscape of the business.
    • A clear view of cross-sell across markets, products and customer segments.
    • Enhanced preparation for financial due diligence (FDD) earlier in the hold cycle.
  • Forecasting the Future:
    • Near-Term Gains: Being able to understand ARR likely to land in the next 1-2 months through a functioning book-to-bill dashboard.
    • Mid-Term Insights: Analysis of book-to-bill data highlighted inefficiencies in the sales pipeline, helping the team address onboarding delays and bottlenecks.

Sustaining Long-term value creation

With robust reporting capabilities in place, the client can now look further ahead. We can support their long term value creation through initiatives including:

  • Developing pricing and product strategies.
  • Enhancing customer lifetime value (CLTV) and retention efforts.
  • Informing broader strategic transformations and implementations.

For more information on how our consulting expertise can help your business navigate strategic challenges, contact us at contact@datavisionservices.co.uk to see how we can best work together.

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