Kinatico's fresh start began with an Adaptive Planning Health Check
Kinatico is a technology company helping employers to manage their workforce and meet regulatory compliance needs. They are an ASX-listed business which supports around 8,000 businesses and nearly 90,000 individuals.
Challenge
Kinatico had already been using Workday Adaptive Planning for a few years. When Natasha Jalani joined the team as Finance Manager, she noted that it was a very good software platform, but something about it was not right.
It was used more as an actuals consolidation tool, the set up was not logical, and they had to call on external support for help too often. In addition, planning activities were still being completed on spreadsheets. The time for the Workday Adaptive Planning license renewal was coming up and if they were to continue investing in the platform, things had to change.
At this point, a team member came across online Workday Adaptive Planning training videos created by QMetrix and said, “If they are making instructional videos that are so easy to understand, perhaps they have a bigger team and understand what best practice is”.
That’s when Kinatico decided to contact QMetrix for help.
“When I first used Workday Adaptive Planning, it was like driving a Ferrari on a 40km/h road. It was frustrating.
I knew it was a powerful tool, but we needed a way to get it from the school zone to the freeway. QMetrix did that for us. They gave us a lot of clarity on what we can do with Workday Adaptive Planning, and have already proven it with tangible results.”
– Natasha Jalani, Finance Manager
Solution
No more band-aid fixes – start with a Health Check
To assist Kinatico with evaluating if Workday Adaptive Planning would continue to work for their needs, QMetrix proposed a Health Check.
A Health Check is a low investment audit and assessment. As part of the process, QMetrix discusses the company’s FP&A goals, reviews their current Workday Adaptive Planning instance, then offers options and advise on how to get the most out of the platform. This includes a roadmap of potential initiatives using a best practice approach.
In Kinatico’s case, QMetrix uncovered poor integration practices and several band-aid fixes that were causing many of the challenges.
Natasha says, “The report from QMetrix was very succinct and clear. It was very detailed and granular, telling us where the hooks and APIs were, and which accounts made sense or not”.
From there, Natasha put forth a business case and convinced internal stakeholders that their Workday Adaptive Planning instance needed to be reconfigured to best practice.
A real upgrade – cleaner, faster, better
Together with Kinatico, QMetrix embarked on a project to implement various recommendations uncovered from the Health Check. Here are some of the results they are seeing:
Firstly, everything is cleaner and easier. Integrations were fixed, and they did an entire clean up and review of accounts in MYOB Acumatica that needed to be connected. This means the finance team now understands the instance better, can self-serve a lot more, and do more advanced reporting – something they had to get external support for in the past.
Secondly, their actuals are functioning as actuals should. They are not just modelled actuals, but true actuals that suit statutory requirements. They no longer spend up to a full day on Cashflow. Just an hour to review one or two journals is enough because everything is linked and reliable.
Thirdly, their Profit and Loss – as well as Cashflow forecasting – is now undertaken within the platform and is accurate. This has meant increased confidence in strategic decisions being done quicker with access to real-time data.
Fourthly, planning is no longer done on Excel. When planning in Excel, files often become way too big and take too long to load. Now, when planning and stress testing or scenario modelling in Workday Adaptive Planning, things don’t break down. The team can do multiple versions, switch between models to see the data clearly, and compare them side by side to view impact.
They are not copying and pasting data from sheets, but just making changes in different places and seeing impacts of these updates immediately.
There have been other benefits as well, and Kinatico are still building on what they have achieved so far.
Natasha says, “Our CFO realised how quickly we were pushing things across, and how quickly forecasts can happen. Now that our Workday Adaptive Planning instance is working well, everything is faster and easier”.
Kinatico have also brought QMetrix on to provide training. Natasha says, “If nobody told you what best practice is, you will never know what it is. We wanted to learn from the best and get our foundations right from scratch”.
Why Workday Adaptive Planning – and why get a Health Check
“Some of my favourite features of Workday Adaptive Planning include the ability to get our actuals data easily consolidated and the ability to forecast. We can make multiple forecasts, stress test the forecast, and do it quickly”, says Natasha.
“I had my reservations before. But now that our Adaptive instance is working well, I would highly recommend it as an FP&A software platform as it has cut our time in half. I’m done with spreadsheets!
“Whether you think your instance is good or not, having someone from the outside having a look and auditing it is a good idea. It has made such a difference for us.”
“The Health Check was also a great way to figure out whether we wanted to work with QMetrix. They proved they could do all this work based on the report they gave with the Health Check. Talking to them, we felt they would be supportive of our needs and could ‘speak our language’ as they understood both finance and the technology.”
– Natasha Jalani, Finance Manager
From the school zone to the freeway – working with QMetrix as an implementation partner
“QMetrix is fantastic. I like working with them and would recommend them anytime. They have trained and technically skilled staff who push the idea of best practice.
“We’ve had consultants who tried to give us bandages to fix cuts, but I wanted to get to the root of the problem and stop cuts from happening altogether. QMetrix upholds that kind of standard and I appreciate that.
“When I first used Workday Adaptive Planning, it was like driving a Ferrari on a 40km road. It was frustrating. I knew it was a powerful tool, but we needed a way to get it from the school zone to the freeway. QMetrix did that for us.
“They gave us a lot of clarity on what we can do with Workday Adaptive Planning, and have already proven it with tangible results. It’s a continual journey of innovation and learning, and we are so glad to be partnering with QMetrix on this journey.”
Impact for Kinatico
- Ability to continue with their investment in Workday Adaptive Planning
- A new instance reconfigured with best practice methodology, providing a solid foundation to future-proof the business
- Proper integrations which have enabled cleaner data, easier processes and confidence in numbers
- More self-serve capabilities so the team does not have to rely too much on external support
- Ability to forecast, model scenarios and plan in real-time to see the impact immediately and make quicker decisions
- A finance team who has been trained using FP&A technology within a best practice framework
Kinatico’s solution
Consulting solution: Health Check
Technology solution: Workday Adaptive Planning
Workday Adaptive Planning Health Check Service
QMetrix provides a Health Check service to thoroughly review your instance, re-evaluate your goals and objectives, offer best practice solutions and update the Adaptive Planning solution to fit your business needs.
Related Articles
2025 Financial Planning Trends Every CFO Should Know
What are the defining trends for finance leaders in 2025? Learn about the importance of upskilling finance teams, adopting cloud-based solutions, and AI as a key enabler of integrated finance.
Workday Adaptive Planning Release Notes 2025: Feature Enhancements Review
Get the latest updates and highlights of each new released feature of Workday Adaptive Planning to enhance your instance.
