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Planning Systems Group: One Step Ahead of Challenges with Proactive Planning

Graeme Gleeson, Director

For a business to meet its goals and improve the bottom line, efficient budgeting and forecasting are crucial. “What will be our cash flow next week or next month?” This question needs to be answered. However, most of the firms are caught in a maze of static forecasting, driven by Excel and legacy collaboration and communication tools such as email and shared folders. The manual processes make it daunting for finance teams to produce quick ‘what-if’ scenarios. Amid the outbreak of COVID-19, businesses are under greater pressure to rehash their operating model and take efficient finance decisions to keep the doors open. This urgent need calls for a solution that goes beyond Excel to forecast cash flow productively.

Planning Systems Group is a company on a mission to create a significant and lasting impact on the business of its clients. The company achieves this by solely focusing on delivering intelligent budgeting, forecasting, reporting, and Business Intelligence solutions. Leveraging its partnership with Workday, Planning Systems is helping clients build budgeting/forecasting models as well as dramatically reduce the time to produce reporting.

Graeme Gleeson, Director of Planning Systems, says, “The cloud-based planning system, Workday Adaptive Planning, is a game-changer in that it allows businesses to plan collaboratively, integrate their ERP, setup easy reporting, and deploy finance and operational dashboards.” Companies using Workday Adaptive Planning can build a new ‘what-if’ scenario, change key assumption drivers, and generate profit and loss, balance sheet and cash flow forecasts for review, almost instantly. Leveraging the platform’s collaborative planning capability and instant refresh of the monthly board and management packs, CFOs and financial controllers spend most of their time and energy on core business processes. It allows teams to steer clear of the inadvertent errors that are a norm with a traditional Excel-based approach. What’s more, the cloud allows users to access data from anywhere, anytime.

Although we provide direct support to our clients, we ensure clients are empowered to make changes and build new models on their own

As an ANZ implementation partner of Workday, Planning Systems understands clients’ needs and helps them build a unique forecast model to produce new forecasts and what-if scenarios in minutes. “Although we provide support to our clients consistently, we ensure clients are empowered to make changes and build new models on their own.” says Gleeson.

Planning Systems has a team of experts from the finance and technology domain that has been fostered in forward-looking work culture. A ‘can do, no fuss, get on with it’ client engagement strategy separates the company in the market.

The company’s expert and experienced Adaptive Consultants and technology professionals streamline the integration of third-party systems with Workday Adaptive Planning (both cloud and on-premise versions). “We can integrate client’s business systems, including ERP, CRM, HR, and others, with an aim to create a single pool of data within the Workday Adaptive Planning platform for simple reporting, dashboard and modelling needs,” says Gleeson. “More importantly, we provide local customer support to our clients. In the current situation where COVID-19 is wreaking havoc globally, we assist clients through Zoom.”

Such a well-rounded client engagement approach has enabled Planning Systems to achieve a growing, happy clientele. For instance, Chorus Group, a not-for-profit based in Perth WA, was facing difficulty in budgeting using Excel. Planning Systems implemented Workday Adaptive Planning that included 15 revenue and expense models built in less than two weeks. During this period, the company replaced the client’s 20+ spreadsheets with Workday Adaptive Planning. It also integrated their ERP (with multi-dimensional data) to enable seamless reporting. In another instance, an Australian aged care provider was able to streamline their budgeting, including their complex fortnight-based wage roster, by replacing Excel with Workday Adaptive Planning—thanks to Planning Systems’ professional services.

Led by a leadership that is like-minded and professional, Planning Systems continues to create great client success stories across the ANZ region. “We are passionate and simply love the work we do,” concludes Gleeson.

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Company
Planning Systems Group

Headquarters
Perth, Sydney, Adelaide, Melbourne, Brisbane, Auckland

Management
Graeme Gleeson, Director

Description
Planning Systems Group is a company on a mission to create a significant and lasting impact on the business of its clients. The company achieves this by solely focusing on delivering intelligent budgeting, forecasting, reporting and Business Intelligence solutions. Leveraging its partnership with Workday, Planning Systems is helping clients build budgeting/forecasting models, as well as dramatically reduce the time to produce reporting. As an ANZ implementation partner of Workday, Planning Systems understands clients’ needs and helps them build a unique forecast model to produce new forecasts and what-if scenarios in minutes