Surface Transforms
Challenge
Surface Transforms is a manufacturer of next-generation carbon-ceramic brake discs for automotive and aircraft applications
When they came to us, they conducted all planning and financial reporting from a single Excel sheet. One person had developed the sheet - and as a consequence, it took effort for others to understand and was challenging to maintain, especially as the company was growing and new finance staff were joining the team.
There was no input from other departments; meaning the burden of work was on a single person to run the business’ finances through this one spreadsheet.
Solution
We developed a simplified planning model showing the three integrated financial statements.
We added a workforce model to plan for staff costs in a growing environment.
We created a revenue planning model so the sales staff could take responsibility for the sales plan: information no longer had to be gathered by the finance department.
We implemented easy data loading and direct connection to the SAP Business One environment, so now the data load happens with the click of a button.
Finally, we created a set of management and statutory reports to give the business finances transparency and assist in strategic financial planning.
Result
- As a growing business, data ownership is now delegated to the correct people. New staff can easily take over tasks; they don’t have to learn a problematic Excel spreadsheet.
- Surface Transforms now enjoys reduced time from the financial month-end to the reporting cycle and time to run multiple scenarios for strategic planning which was impossible before.