For a software subscription company like HubSpot that is growing 30% year over year, it’s essential to be able to make informed business decisions around what markets to address in the future, where to open the next office, or whether to invest in new versus existing customers. As the company expanded rapidly in 2019 to $500 million+ in revenue and 2,500+ employees, finance was always trying to keep up with the pace of change and growth in the business. Ad hoc forecasting and manual data entry left too much room for potential forecasting error and meant precious time was wasted consolidating and reviewing spreadsheets rather than analyzing data.
Today, thanks to Workday Adaptive Planning, the finance organization has more flexibility to support HubSpot’s rapid expansion. And that means there’s not only more accurate data available for decision-making, but also more time to offer high-value analysis that drives better business decisions.
Challenges
Rapid expansion.
As the business grew, the finance organization had to keep up with adding new entities, cost centers, accounts, employees, and forecast assumptions. The team also needed to provision appropriate visibility and access to confidential information in the forecasting tool for new team members, based on their role and location.
Cumbersome reporting.
In a company growing this rapidly, updated reports on revenue, expense, and headcount trends were a daily need but required days of time the finance team didn’t have to spare.
Tedious consolidation.
With multiple sources of data, the finance team lost too much valuable time manually consolidating information and revising it due to errors.
Results
Managing rapid growth.
The flexibility of the Workday Adaptive Planning system means the finance team can now automate allocations, global benefits, and payroll tax assumptions and complete a forecast in 15-20% less time than before. New users can be added to the tool seamlessly without help from IT.
Intuitive self-service reporting.
Workday Adaptive Planning allows each team member to be the “CFO” of their department by striking a balance between standardized and customer reporting at all levels of the organization.
Simplicity and automation.
Adding a new employee plus their related “surround sound” costs is now simple with built-in assumptions around calculating payroll taxes, health insurance costs, facilities allocations, per-head travel assumptions, etc. that are automatically applied.
For the corporate reporting team, Workday Adaptive Planning is a lifesaver. Knowing that the analysts on my team are entering their forecasts, that we can refresh everything and automatically re-run global assumptions and allocation forecasts and that I can look at the updated forecast immediately is key.
VP of FP&A