Heroes

Dina Bank is a Revelwood Hero

As director of financial systems of a full-service media and marketing communications agency, Dina is responsible for providing management with information about staff costing, as well as business unit and client profitability.

When Dina joined the company, the management team had already selected a business performance management (BPM) solution and Dina was charged with overseeing the implementation of their new budgeting, planning and reporting system. When completed, Dina unveiled a dynamic financial system that enables her team to perform 360-degree analytics by "slicing and dicing” information on unlimited business scenarios, sharpening forecasting accuracy and giving management insight into data they never had before. Dina's work enables management to identify potential problem areas quickly and easily, keeping them apprised of the company’s financial health.

With resounding success on the initial implementation, Dina expanded the scope of the project to include salary forecasting, the monthly payroll reconciliation and client profitability, making the work for those teams more streamlined and infinitely easier. Dina’s current short-term goal is to roll out the system to the operational staff, effectively decentralizing forecasting in the company.

Dina has received recognition at a global level for her work and is often invited to transfer her vast knowledge as a speaker at industry events and as a contributor in financial publications.

At Revelwood, we make heroes of our clients by empowering them with BPM solutions. To learn more about becoming a hero, click here.

Rob Bonatakis is a Revelwood Hero

As manager of financial planning and analysis for a global leader in maintenance, repair and revitalization services for the energy industry, Rob is known as a “data guru”. He shepherds and coordinates the collection of data from all business units, overseeing corporate budgeting, planning, reporting, capital resourcing and public filings for a $600M company that leads the industry in generating cash. With each line of business using a different general ledger, revenue system and massive Excel spreadsheets, it was difficult to efficiently collect, store, consolidate and report on the financial data, making the financial planning and analysis process difficult, time-consuming and error-prone. A better solution was needed.

Rob spearheaded the initiative to implement a business performance management (BPM) solution. His experience and finesse with data enabled the company to go from crawling to sprinting in virtually no time. With all the various systems integrated and data now residing in a centralized repository, Rob has been able to eliminate unnecessary manual data gathering and data entry errors, dramatically increasing the efficacy of the financial planning and analysis process. With accurate and consolidated real-time data, Rob uses actual and budget information to do fast, flexible reporting and ad hoc analysis—including the ability to ‘slice and dice’ data by industry, refinery and product line. Processes that used to take hours or even days to complete now take a few right clicks and a couple of F9s and are done in just minutes.

Rob has met and exceeded all expectations in revamping the entire financial planning and analysis system by implementing a world-class BPM solution. He wins rave reviews from his CFO and other senior management members, as well as the individual business units on a continual basis. Everyone loves the BPM system and is thrilled to be working faster, smarter and more strategically.

At Revelwood, we make heroes of our clients by empowering them with BPM solutions. To learn more about becoming a hero, click here.

Darris Crandall is a Revelwood Hero

As VP in accounting and finance in a full-service investment bank, Darris works directly for the controller and CFO, managing the internal and external financial reporting and budgeting for all domestic and international business lines. Shortfalls in the reporting process and difficulty managing different divisions led Darris to seek and implement a business performance management (BPM) solution for his firm.

The results have been tremendous – far exceeding original expectations. The time savings are unquantifiable – “countless man hours saved”. Reporting is now done on a regional, individual entity and consolidated basis, quickly and easily. The system has also proven adaptive in expanding from a private to a publicly held company listed on the NYSE. Darris is able to meet strict government requirements including Sarbanes Oxley compliance and he uses his system as a management tool for reporting and vendor spend analysis.

Darris and his team have garnered continuous praise from top management for their ability to easily adapt to business decisions in a short time frame and accommodate tight deadlines while complying with all regulatory issues.

At Revelwood, we make heroes of our clients by empowering them with BPM solutions. To learn more about becoming a hero, click here.

Justin Croft is a Revelwood Hero

As manager of financial analysis and planning for one of the largest privately held wireless companies in the United States, Justin is responsible for the annual budgeting and planning process, profitability analysis for rate plans, features and proposed products, as well as many other special finance projects that ensure company success. With hundreds of spreadsheets, multiple databases and an antiquated budgeting system, Justin spent most of his time gathering and verifying the accuracy of data rather than helping management make strategic decisions.

Justin's team began a diligent effort to find a better budgeting and planning system that would allow the company to produce more dynamic and detailed budgets in a faster and more efficient manner. With little internal IT resources available, it was critical that Justin find a user-friendly and robust solution his department could manage.

Justin's hard work paid off and now his company has a centralized database for everyone to enter their budgeting information, allowing one comprehensive budget that offers transparency and increases data integrity. The ability to drill down to the detail behind the numbers has pleased everyone from the CFO all the way down to the line managers. The accounting department is no longer burdened with manually looking up invoices and researching questions from the field. With fast, flexible reporting and ad hoc analysis, Justin feels he is able to focus on the needs of the company and contribute meaningful insight to support management with their decision-making process.

At Revelwood, we make heroes of our clients by empowering them with BPM solutions. To learn more about becoming a hero, click here.

Barry Ferguson is a Revelwood Hero

As senior director of finance of one of the nation’s fastest growing voice and broadband Internet providers focused exclusively on serving small businesses, Barry has ownership of budgeting, planning and analysis, as well as overseeing stock option valuation and administration. Rapid and continued growth made using spreadsheets for modeling, forecasting and sensitivity analysis cumbersome and unmanageable. Often, there was little time to understand the data or see what was behind the numbers. A more robust solution was needed for timely and accurate forecasting.

Barry and his experienced team thoroughly researched the many options for a business performance management (BPM) solution. His leadership and his team’s determination resulted in taking a quantum leap from their primitive spreadsheet structure to a powerful and unified analytics platform. With all necessary data residing in one place, Barry is able to ‘slice and dice” the data for improved visibility and flexibility. Moreover, it is now possible to easily marry the financial and operational data so Barry and the groups he supports can make better and more informed decisions that affect the company’s bottom line.

Initially deploying the solution in the finance area, Barry and his team are now learning new ways to apply their BPM solution to other functional areas in the company including HR, operations and accounting. Barry’s team has been recognized by top management all the way down to individual contributors for what they have been able to accomplish. Known by his team for his high quality and efficiency expectations, Barry has created a world-renowned finance group everyone at the company appreciates and respects.

At Revelwood, we make heroes of our clients by empowering them with BPM solutions. To learn more about becoming a hero, click here.

Andrea Hilder is a Revelwood Hero

As the assistant casino controller for a global cruise ship company, Andrea is responsible for compiling the data of all ship casinos to assist the company casino controller with the annual budgeting and reporting process. Growth over the years had led to more than 200 linked spreadsheets and reports which were occasionally prone to errors. Gathering data was an extremely manual process and verifying the accuracy of that data was so time-intensive that late updates to the budget could not be accommodated and forecasting was not a viable option. In addition, data needed for analysis from one financial system could only provide hard copy “vanilla” reports that could only be printed and data from their other financial system was only available to a limited number of users.

Andrea championed the initiative to improve and automate the annual budgeting and reporting process. After searching various options, Andrea found a business performance management (BPM) solution that met the needs of the corporate casino controller’s office and would be easy for non-finance end-users to use. The result has been nothing short of miraculous. The BPM system was readily adopted and accepted by all users. Data is now accessible from a centralized repository which allows users to see and analyze data they could not previously gather without manual effort or request from the controller or Andrea. Reports can be easily manipulated or copied into Excel, making them more versatile and useful. Reports and charts that were once thought impossible are now available instantly by ship, by brand, for actual versus forecast and more. The annual budgeting and reporting process is much more efficient, Andrea and her team have more time to devote to other projects during budget season and are working fewer weekends.

Andrea and her team have received continuous praise from everyone who uses the new BPM solution. There is also a resounding consensus on how much easier the annual budgeting and reporting process is now. Andrea continues to be an advocate of the system, training new users and learning new and innovative ways to use it.

At Revelwood, we make heroes of our clients by empowering them with performance management solutions. To learn more about becoming a hero, click here.

Brian Johnson is a Revelwood Hero

As VP and global finance systems leader for a leading financial services company with more than 15 million customers in over 26 countries, Brian is responsible for providing innovative processes and advanced technology to enable his organization to effectively utilize financial data.

A multitude of disparate financial systems and a lack of transparency into corporate consolidation and global expense budgeting results led Brian to spearhead a BPM initiative. With an enterprise-wide expense budgeting solution firmly in place in less than 140 days, more than 850 worldwide users participate in the workflow-based budgeting process, utilizing more than 20 defined currencies. Through Brian’s efforts, the company now has one global expense budgeting solution and an 800% cycle time improvement on expense allocations. Overwhelming user acceptance has resulted in immediate system adoption.

A visionary, Brian’s future plans include enabling the entire company to budget, report, model and forecast through a single global solution that allows continuous improvement, sustainability, growth and low cost of ownership.

At Revelwood, we make heroes of our clients by empowering them with BPM solutions. To learn more about becoming a hero, click here.

Jonathan Kahan is a Revelwood Hero

As director of finance and research for a division of a top media and entertainment company, corporate management relies on Jonathan to provide insight and visibility into financial and operational data. Struggling with disparate data and multiple spreadsheets involving thousands of calculations, creating an accurate forecast was a daunting and time-consuming task, often prone to error with little time for analysis.

Jonathan was integral in spearheading the initiative to select and implement a dynamic business performance management (BPM) solution for his division’s budgeting, forecasting and reporting within just eight weeks. The speed with which he can gather information, along with the breadth and depth of the information, allows him to devote more time to analytics. Rather than give a single metric or number, Jonathan can tell a story, helping management make strategic decisions to increase revenue.

Jonathan’s ability to transform financial data has not only earned him top recognition from his corporate management and peers, he is also sought after for speaking opportunities at industry events.

At Revelwood, we make heroes of our clients by empowering them with BPM solutions. To learn more about becoming a hero, click here.

Allen Schatz is a Revelwood Hero

As director of financial reporting and planning for a division of a leading media and entertainment company, Allen is responsible for collecting and disseminating financial information. A plethora of multi-linked spreadsheets scattered over a multitude of revenue and cost centers made data gathering manual and time-intensive.

Allen helped replace the company’s archaic spreadsheet system with a multi-dimensional business performance management (BPM) solution that automatically gathers and aggregates data in real-time from the disparate centers. With a centralized repository, planning and reporting can be done in real time and reports that used to take hours to create are now done with the push of a button in only minutes, leaving more time for Allen to analyze the results. This allows him to help management make important decisions.

Allen’s passion for the solution led to his endorsement of a corporate-wide initiative. This will align all the different divisions, enabling everyone to accomplish more by working smarter, not harder.

At Revelwood, we make heroes of our clients by empowering them with BPM solutions. To learn more about becoming a hero, click here.

Chris Wright is a Revelwood Hero

As a senior business analyst for one of the nation’s fastest growing managed services providers of IP-based communications and IT services to small businesses, Chris is responsible for compiling and interpreting company data to support senior management’s decisions. With rapid growth, reorganizations, and new markets came an unruly array of disparate systems and a budget model consisting of over 200 spreadsheets. Gathering data and verifying its accuracy left little time for analysis.

Chris’s department made the choice to find and implement a robust, driver-based, budgeting and forecasting system that would allow scenario analysis and ad-hoc reporting on all of the company’s systems. With a background in software engineering, Chris was able to work with IT to construct data feeds for the new system and translate business rules into calculations as part of the implementation. The result is that Excel-based reports that used to be static are now dynamic with the touch of a button. Interlinking data with all the functional groups in the organization has allowed Chris to tie together granular data such as customer, employee headcount and compensation and company financials to give instant answers to managers at all levels. Reported information is more timely and accurate, which has greatly improved reaction time.

Chris and his team now have a system that leverages their expertise in modeling while scaling to the growing needs of the business. No longer simply trying to tread water in a sea of data, Chris is able to focus his time on analyzing the issues that matter most to senior management.

At Revelwood, we make heroes of our clients by empowering them with BPM solutions. To learn more about becoming a hero, click here.