Customer Success Story: PlayNetwork
2016
PlayNetwork Embraces Financial Planning and Analysis and Cloud-Based Tools to Improve Business Decisions in Fast-Paced Entertainment Media Services Market
With the help of IntuitiveTek, PlayNetwork adopts Adaptive Suite to incorporate analytics and gain insights to improve profitability.
In the entertainment media services industry, companies must gauge ever-changing consumer desires and provide to their retail, restaurant, and hospitality customers the branded music and digital media experiences that build lasting impressions with shoppers, diners, and guests. Success not only depends on continually innovating to offer the right mix of services and technology, but also negotiating optimal contract terms with customers to ensure profitability.
The importance of innovation recently galvanized PlayNetwork finance leaders to architect a modern financial planning and analysis (FP&A) system and transform the company’s finance organization. Now, finance team members have best-in-class tools to access opportunity-based data analytics to gain insights and more accurately evaluate potential acquisitions, negotiate customer contract terms, and help executives across the company make better business decisions.
Previously, the finance department focused on budgeting, planning, and forecasting processes, with little time devoted to strategic financial analysis. But, recently as PlayNetwork grew internationally with an office in Hong Kong and introduced a new content delivery platform to distribute branded music and messaging in-store, on-device and on the web, it became imperative to modernize finance operations. Management reached out to Intuitive Tek, an Adaptive Insights strategic partner in Lakewood, CO, to help the company implement Adaptive Insights’ Adaptive Suite FP&A system. Now, the cloud-based suite has automated financial budgeting, planning and forecasting, and it provides finance decision-makers and sales teams at PlayNetwork with real-time analytics to improve contract negotiations and drive overall business strategy.
According to finance leaders, the time savings with Adaptive Suite have been exponential. The annual planning cycle has been cut from six months to just three months. And, while it used to take anywhere from three to five weeks to update financial forecasts, now a forecast can take as little as one day.
Streamlining financial processes generates critical analytical insights
Historically the PlayNetwork accounting team used Excel and approached budgeting, forecasting and planning as simply standard transactional financial reporting tasks. But, when the finance department embraced a true FP&A focus, leaders knew they needed a new planning system to automate tasks, provide more accurate financial data, and enable critical analytical financial insights. After careful consideration, they selected Adaptive Suite. And on the advice of Adaptive Insights, PlayNetwork executives decided to work with IntuitiveTEK experts to implement Adaptive Suite because of IntuitiveTEK’s long list of successful Adaptive Suite projects. In just a matter of months, Intuitive Tek’s skilled consultants implemented Adaptive Planning and OfficeConnect. PlayNetwork leaders appreciated Intuitive Tek’s valuable hands-on approach during every step of the project, and they continue to benefit from Intuitive Tek’s no-cost Tier 1 support services.
Success not only depends on continually innovating to offer the right mix of services and technology, but also negotiating optimal contract terms with customers to ensure profitability.
Today, it takes just three months for PlayNetwork finance staff members to complete the annual financial planning cycle using Adaptive Suite. Forecasting is much easier, too In the past, the finance team did just two forecasts, which involved distributing Excel workbooks and worrying about information inadvertently being changed. Today, the team does approximately eight forecasts a year, and in the near future there are plans to implement a rolling 12-month rolling forecast using Adaptive Suite.
The sales teams at PlayNetwork are also achieving huge benefits from the cloud-based FP&A system. For the first time, sales managers are using real-time tools to access accurate and detailed analytics to help with contract negotiations with existing customers. Each customer is unique. They select different music service options and may lease or purchase equipment—all factors that impact pricing and contact terms. Now, a profit and loss statement is created for each customer in Adaptive, and it is very easy to add new services or equipment purchases, and see very clearly in real-time what potential impact the addition of new services or equipment purchases will have on revenue generated from a specific customer.
PlayNetwork finance decision-makers report that not only has Adaptive Suite freed up bandwidth for strategic analytics, it has also provided them with the ability to dig deeper into operating expenses and clearly understand the variances in actuals versus plan and how they are being projected at the department level. Overall, Adaptive Suite and the support of Intuitive Tek has made it much easier to incorporate analytics to pinpoint critical opportunities for PlayNetwork and drive continued growth across the business.