The main challenge for agricultural exporter Balco Australia is to stay ahead of the pack in a competitive global market of substitute products and rising production costs. When Financial Controller Edgar Torres joined the company, Balco had just decided to implement Workday Adaptive Planning to make teams more aware of the financial implications of their decisions.
“A key strategy for Balco was to improve transparency and accountability by involving all stakeholders in the budgeting, forecasting and reporting process,” explains Torres. “Having already selected Workday Adaptive Planning at my previous company, I knew it was a powerful tool that would put financial modelling into the hands of the broader business.”
Giving budget holders agency and control
Since Balco deployed Workday Adaptive Planning, the budgeting process has become significantly more collaborative. “Previously, it was very siloed, private and restrictive. The budget was maintained by finance, which made all the assumptions,” notes Torres. “Whereas now, with Workday Adaptive Planning, we get input from across the business to help create the budget and set financial targets.”
With all key budget holders contributing to and consuming the data in Workday Adaptive Planning, the result is greater transparency, ownership and understanding of the budget – and less overspending. “It’s a tough year in agriculture, but now that the business has clarity around costs, managers are still coming in under budget.”
Workday Adaptive Planning gives budget holders agency and control of their spend. People understand their numbers better.
Financial Controller
Making smarter business decisions
From one annual budget, Balco now has updated monthly forecasts that the business can pull apart and use for modelling to support data-based decisions. As a result, different teams now harness Workday Adaptive Planning models to inform decisions around stock management, revenue, CAPEX planning, staff planning, operating and overhead models.
“We plug in sales and production volumes and use Workday Adaptive Planning to drill down into transactions by P&L account to analyse areas of cost savings and process improvement opportunities,” explains Torres.
In a dynamic industry, the ability to adjust assumptions quickly and easily has greatly improved decision-making. For example, in sales planning, when the manager forecasts expected monthly sales, the model then outputs a sales price that will be both competitive in the market and profitable for the company. “For someone non-financial, like the sales manager, that’s game-changing information,” says Torres.
Teams also value their new ability to change assumptions and model multiple scenarios based on, for example, different sales tonnages, sudden export restrictions or cost-saving initiatives to see the impact on Balco’s numbers.
People are actually thinking about their departments from a cost perspective.
Financial Controller
Increasing sophistication with future use cases
Next, Torres is keen to put Workday Adaptive Planning to use for demand planning. “The idea is, the model will be able to tell us, ‘If this is what you think you’re going to sell, and this is what’s in inventory, this is the requirement from a production perspective.’ That will be a significant benefit.”
Torres is also fascinated by the potential for AI functionality to offer best-case scenarios. “I can envisage a time when the system proactively tells us, ‘You need this type of roster to produce this amount, which will cost you this much.’ Imagine the time those types of insight will save.”