New Zealand–based outdoor gear company Kathmandu prides itself on “Kiwi ingenuity” and constant adaptation to customers’ ever-changing needs. When the company’s finance team wanted that same level of ingenuity and flexibility in its budget-building, it turned to Anaplan. As a result, the budget process is faster, data is unified, and business leaders can view and adjust forecasts on a secure, collaborative platform.
I estimate that Anaplan saves us three weeks per year in our budgeting and forecasting cycle.
Brad Seaman, Financial Planning and Analysis Manager
The finance team at outdoor travel and adventure company Kathmandu wanted better tools to tackle key planning, budgeting, and reporting tasks.Processes had become time-consuming: Large master spreadsheets had to be separated into departments by finance, updated by various groups in the business, and then reassembled in finance. These manual processes increased the risk of version control problems and data entry errors.
After comparing a range of options, Kathmandu chose the Connected Planning path. They chose Anaplan because it was cloud-based and could be quickly and easily configured in-house. It was also easy to set access controls so that department heads only saw the information they needed.
“I estimate that Anaplan saves us three weeks per year in our budgeting and forecasting cycle,” Seaman says. “The savings mainly come from streamlining how we communicate with executives on salary and head office costs, and we’ve also had improvements in the sales forecasting process.”
Anaplan acts as single master data source that users can view in a variety of ways depending on their department and role. It has reduced Kathmandu’s reliance on spreadsheets and improved the way department heads interact with budget, planning, and report data. Anaplan handles Kathmandu’s large financial datasets with ease, while providing strong data security and assurance that results are accurate.
