Batting for rolling forecast success with SACA

The South Australia Cricket Association (SACA) is responsible for managing, promoting and developing the game of cricket in South Australia. They coordinate international and domestic cricket matches, coaching and development programs for junior cricketers, umpiring and ground management. They also administer the high performance pathway for cricket in South Australia.

Manual aggregation and data integrity concerns slowed down SACA’s finance team

Historically, SACA ran an annual budget on a spreadsheet-based model which had been refined over several years.

They brought in a consultant to streamline the process and also added macros to make it more efficient.

However with more than 20 budget contributors involved, it was difficult to maintain version control and the aggregation process was time consuming.

In addition, there were integrity issues.

There was a lack of confidence that the data making it into the budget was completely accurate, which led to non-value add manual reconciliation processes being undertaken. There were also cases where data was simply missed.

Breaking the traditional annual mindset to eliminate non value add reconciliation

In their desire to improve the integrity of the planning cycle, SACA’s finance team also wanted to break the mindset of an annual budget.

Instead of looking towards a year-end cycle, they wanted a more integrated model that would drive the association to constantly think forward and be more agile.

SACA knew quarterly updates based on performance would be almost impossible to manage in an Excel-based model, and they would likely have needed to hire a person just to manage this – it was not an option.

They needed:

• An all-in-one system which included financial reporting capabilities
• Support for their vision to implement a quarterly 18 month rolling forecast
• Reliable data to facilitate more informed and forward-looking decision making
• A cloud-based platform everyone could access from anywhere, without compromising on enterprise grade security
• Seamless integration with their ERP to provide up-to-date, accurate data

Stepping up to a continuous eighteen month rolling forecast model

During the discovery phase, SACA narrowed down the software options to Board, Tagetik and Workday Adaptive Planning.

They asked each consultancy to undertake a Proof of Concept (PoC) to showcase the tool’s capability based on a subset of their modelling requirements.

Eventually they chose Workday Adaptive Planning. It is easy to use, well structured, can be tailored quickly and can be managed by the finance team.

Moving to a one stop shop for continuous eighteen month rolling forecasts

Kicking off the project, QMetrix and SACA reviewed their existing model and defined project objectives and scope.

Instead of a “big bang” approach incorporating everything within the first phase, QMetrix recommended a phased approach. Breaking the project into logical chunks helps with change management.

SACA and QMetrix went through detailed model design discussions and iterations before development took place. With careful planning, the actual model build was quite seamless; as we say – “measure twice, cut once”.

Making the most of Workday Adaptive Planning, SACA used its functions extensively.

This included the Workflow feature which allows the finance team to track task progress of each user, enabling the team to manage the workflow and know what data can be relied on as final.

Unique to SACA, while most departments plan to a monthly time-based cycle, certain departments manage their budgets on an events basis, which can happen at any time.

To incorporate this, QMetrix built a unique cube sheet to forecast by event and seamlessly incorporate the results into the time based financial forecast.

While they implemented a new way of planning, SACA has not had to allocate additional resources to support this due to Workday Adaptive Planning’ ability to facilitate rolling forecasts.

QMetrix implemented an integrated solution in stages

The Workday Adaptive Planning implementation for SACA was broken into 3 distinct stages:

• Phase 1: The initial phase focused on the foundation elements and modelling of the Profit & Loss with its associated driver-based models. QMetrix developed 8 driver-based models and provided hands-on training.
• Phase 2: The second phase focused on the 3-way Balance Sheet and Cashflow model with associated models to handle the timing of receipts and payments.
• Phase 3: The third phase included minor enhancements and extended the use of Workday Adaptive Planning into other areas. This included leveraging OfficeConnect to automate Board Report packs and exporting budgeting data back into the corporate data warehouse.

Impact for SACA

• Move from an outdated annual budget to a quarterly 18 month rolling forecast that is integrated and reliable
• Time and labour savings, such as cutting the time taken to populate board reporting templates from 3 – 4 hours down to just a few minutes per month, and not having to allocate resources to set up a new rolling forecast each cycle
• Improved user collaboration on a cloud based system that can be accessed by anyone, anywhere, anytime – allowing immediate access to financial information for data-driven decision making
• 100% confidence in their data which is refreshed hourly from their ERP system
• A one-stop shop for management reporting, variance analysis and planning in one software program
• Greater accountability from department managers who can have their finger on the pulse to review costs and plan ahead