Slater & Gordon are a leading Australian consumer law firm founded in 1935. They provide specialist legal and complementary services in a range of areas including personal injury, superannuation and insurance, class actions, commercial litigation and employment law.
Challenge
Slater & Gordon are a complex business. They have many practice areas, each with different Excel models to support planning activities. Consolidation in Excel was difficult, clunky and time consuming.
The finance team spent all their time on putting a budget together or doing a forecast that was out of date before they finished it. This was not workable and drove them to look for a solution that would help save time.
Solution
Slater & Gordon landed on Workday Adaptive Planning as the technology that could help, and QMetrix as their implementation partner.
To provide context of the business: Slater & Gordon have 13 different practice areas with a strong focus on personal injury law, broken down further into departments such as workers compensation, motor vehicles accidents and medical negligence.
They were innovators of the “No Win – No Fee” model which means if they do not win a client’s claim, legal fees are not paid. They also run class actions, coordinating legal action on behalf of a wider group of claimants.
Slater & Gordon can have as many as 16,000 individual cases running at any one time and these cases are funded over several years, accumulating internal charges, disbursements, investigation costs, external legal fees and more – with the hope of getting a profitable settlement when they win.
Modelling the risk, cash impacts and return on investments for such cases are complicated, and it is an enormous task to manage when you have thousands of them.
“We have 13 practice areas generating revenue and doing our planning in Excel with files linking to each other was really clunky and time consuming. A reforecast took a whole month, and by then it was outdated. With Workday Adaptive Planning, we can now do a reforecast in a week and it’s far more accurate. Not only are we updating drivers, we can involve each practice and challenge their thinking, and get their input to ensure they own the numbers.”
A reliable 3-way planning model linked to revenue forecasts
One of the early objectives for Slater & Gordon was to set up an integrated 3-way planning model. When this was in Excel spreadsheets, it was a struggle to make last minute changes and the implications of inaccuracy were huge, potentially resulting in millions of unaccounted future fees.
Now with Workday Adaptive Planning, reliability is no longer a problem. Depending on the practice area, revenue models in Adaptive Planning are built on differing drivers, but commonly include the probability of success, settlement value and expected length of case. Importantly, changes are quick and easy to update.
Easier and higher quality forecasts
Trent Grabham, Financial Planning & Analysis Manager, says, “A reforecast took a whole month, and by then it was outdated. With Workday Adaptive Planning, we can now do a reforecast in a week and it is far more accurate. Not only are we updating drivers, we can involve each practice and challenge their thinking, and get their input to ensure they own the numbers. It has saved us a lot of manual work and we are now focussing on the right things”.
In addition, with a longer term focus, they can do a five year plan at a higher granularity leveraging the same capabilities within Adaptive Planning.
Seamless data integration
Part of what has simplified the process is seamless integration. Trent says, “The amount of time it saves is the best thing about it. The data we need for planning comes from our finance system, HR system and operations system. We have thousands of legal cases at any one time so it’s great to have it all integrated”.
The data connected includes general ledger, with transaction level data so they can drill into transactions on demand. HR related headcount details are loaded with secure access to support labour cost planning, and operational data is sourced to understand enquiries, appointments and growth in new cases.
There is no need for clunky SQL to pull data, and Trent says there have been no performance issues with Adaptive Planning’s integration capabilities.
Adaptive Planning’s most underrated feature
Adaptive Planning’s Microsoft Office plug-in, OfficeConnect, has been a bonus for the team at Slater & Gordon. “OfficeConnect has definitely made month-end reporting a lot easier. You just set up all your templates, push a button to refresh it each month, and you get PowerPoints or board packs at the end. It has been a big benefit. The value of it is underrated; it has saved us so much time”.
While it is the finance team members who use Adaptive Planning primarily, practice managers can also view and access reports and information on demand.
“The implementation with QMetrix was a success. One thing that stood out was the project management side of things. QMetrix consistently kept us informed on where things were at and who needed to do what.”
– Trent Grabham, FP&A Manager
Getting both the big picture and small details, where you need it
While it helps you see the big picture and plan for the future, Adaptive Planning also lets you get right into the detail when you need it. For Slater & Gordon, their biggest cost is people. To manage this component, they built a powerful labour model in Adaptive Planning which incorporates dimensions and attributes.
This allows them to categorise staff types (such as professional or support staff), and tag people who are going on parental leave, pending promotions or changing departments. This means when they do a budget review, it is far simpler to pinpoint reasons for variances on a comparative basis.
Managing it all in-house
Beyond the initial build and support phase, Slater & Gordon are now self-sufficient and do not require support from an external partner. Trent says Adaptive Planning is easy enough to maintain, and when someone new joins, it is not hard for them to pick it up.
On working with QMetrix, Trent says, “The implementation with QMetrix was a success. One thing that stood out was the project management side of things. QMetrix consistently kept us informed on where things were at and who needed to do what. This helped us keep on track, especially as we were running this alongside business-as-usual work which could get really busy.
“The QMetrix team obviously had good knowledge of the Workday Adaptive Planning system. Our build was unique because of our complicated business model. We faced some roadblocks but they talked through various options with us. They didn’t just pick up our Excel models and put them in Adaptive Planning. There were things to change and improve on, so having their insights on the best way to tackle those was valuable”.
Impact for Slater and Gordon
- Reliable planning models that provide the big picture view, but enable drilling into details when needed
- Seamless data integration with finance, HR and operations systems
- Quarterly forecasts and month-end reports that are higher quality, more accurate, and quicker to create
- More time to focus on the right things: Moving from manual time-consuming tasks, to more business partnering and value-adding work
Slater and Gordon’s solution
Consulting solution: Budgeting and planning
Technology solution: Workday Adaptive Planning
Implementation partner: QMetrix
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