Here’s how saved thousands for Yarra Trams

By working together we achieved a compliant audit system and built an intuitive platform that can be access from anywhere.

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Company:

Yarra Trams in Melbourne is the world’s largest tram network consisting of seven locations: four depots, 206 trams, carrying over 60 million passengers more than 8.9 million kilometres per year.

Industry:

Transport

Company Size:

1000+ Employees

Region:

Melbourne, Australia

Existing ERP:

Spreadsheets

Key Software Used:

WORKDAY ADAPTIVE PLANNING

The Challenge:

Yarra Trams CFO Jon Fang came to Forpoint with issues related to still having quite manual processes in the finance team. Excel was being used heavily across the department, a very manual process that was limiting their ability to growth to the new business needs. The manual process was also dependant on a single resource to maintain the process and would result in discrepancies in the budget and forecast. The process also didn’t allow insight or analysis into the data. We knew there was a better way.

Yarra Trams CFO Jon Fang came to Forpoint with number of issues with the existing budgeting and financial planning tool which has led to the request for a replacement application; these include connectivity issues, unsatisfactory vendor support and, as a result, over-reliance on OCMS for ongoing support and over-reliance on Excel spreadsheets as inputs. Furthermore, once these issues are overcome, the existing application only allows for processing of aggregate data, and does not provide the capability to drill down into underlying detail.

Finance have conducted a month long trial on the “Adaptive Insights” (“A.I”) solution, concluding that this Cloud based solution, coupled with SLA with new Vendor is expected to deliver a significantly higher level of functionality, robustness and reliability than the existing solution

The Solution:

By engaging the Forpoint team for implementation and transformation of the FP&A we first needed to understand where the data in the existing OCMS was living and what valuable data was required to ensure that the business could amplify this function. The goals that were outlined in discovery were met through a comprehensive data analysis process and integration from Great Plains to Workday adaptive was seamless. The following was achieved through via our implementation team.

Now, Yarra Trams had the ability to:

Run a unified collaborative process in the finance function
Access a system of record that mitigates the risk of a resource reliant process
Utilise a system that requires finance resource only to augment (no IT resource required)
Easily provide sensitivity analysis
Solve complexity for Multi Financial reporting periods

“We love using Workday Adaptive Planning as I can respond to business needs and support decision with data too.”

Jon Fang, Manager, Financial Planning & Analysis

The Results

Yarra Trams has reported savings of thousands from deploying this solution, which has reduced manual labour and increased accuracy, not to mention being able to clearly see financial data in real-time and not having to wait until after end-of-the-month reports. Compliance for audit has become seamless and the intuitive system can be accessed from anywhere due to being cloud-based. Moving from spreadsheets means now, the need to manually enter from disparate spreadsheets is eliminated entirely, freeing up the team’s time to focus on forecasting and strategy.