Professional Services
| Function: | Products: |
| Financial Planning | Workday Adaptive Planning |
Challenge
An agribusiness investment firm experienced rapid expansion—from managing three dairy farms to overseeing nearly 60 properties, including beef, orchards, vineyards, and hops farms. This growth brought a heavy planning burden: each property relied on a detailed Excel model, and consolidating hundreds of spreadsheets for budgeting was cumbersome, error-prone, and unsustainable. Finance and investment managers found the process time-consuming, lacking scalability, and limiting strategic agility.
Solution
To streamline and scale financial planning, the firm adopted Workday Adaptive Planning, which offered:
- Custom modeling and workpapers with drill-down budget details and the flexibility to build new what-if scenarios.
- Automated consolidation of budget inputs across all properties.
- A standardized workflow for rolling out budgeting and forecasting across a growing portfolio.
Results
- Faster financial insights: Forecasts now complete in roughly half the time previously required.
- Budget cycle shortened: Annual budgeting was made 10 days faster.
- Increased strategic focus: FP&A teams now devote three times more effort to strategic initiatives.
- No additional headcount: Despite continued expansion, financial planning scaled without adding team members.
- Enhanced investment rigor: The firm now evaluates 10-year investment cases directly in the system, standardizing assumptions and quickly identifying underperforming assets for review or divestment.
- Real-time benchmarking: Teams can now instantly compare property performance (e.g. by region or commodity type), detect underperformers early, and respond proactively—eliminating surprises.