Data, insight, and relevance reporting for America’s favorite diner.

Challenges.

Denny’s had an outdated finance system that required their planning team to use spreadsheets to source data from end users and upload it into the system. Data collation was manual and cumbersome, and end users were only minimally engaged in the planning process.

Results.

Denny’s deployed cloud-based Workday Adaptive Planning, a unified general and administrative expense planning process, for headcount and operational expense planning.

Benefits and results.

Accountability and engagement for end users.

Approximately 100 Denny’s cost center owners rapidly adopted Adaptive Planning, which gives them enhanced visibility into their budgets. Granular planning data and intuitive usability improve accountability and ownership among end users and budget owners.

Timely and rich reporting.

The Denny’s financial planning and analysis (FP&A) team can now do more granular planning and reporting at both the supplier and project levels, which was not possible in the previous system. The OfficeConnect functionality helps the team generate monthly and board reports faster, allowing more time for analysis and decision-making. Cost center owners can configure their dashboards and create their own reports, which improves relevance and eases course correction.

Agility and insights for decision-making.

At the beginning of the pandemic, the FP&A team started with annual planning and five official forecasts per year. The flexibility of Adaptive Planning allows them to do monthly forecasts for projecting headcount and expenses to respond to fast-changing market conditions. By generating a larger number of what-if scenarios to assess the financial impact of closures and furloughs, the team can be more agile and responsive. This has been critical to managing the business during the COVID-19 crisis.

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