CFO Solutions, a leading EPM and business intelligence consultancy, is proud to announce that it has been chosen for the “Partner of the Year” award by Board International. This recognition acknowledges CFO Solutions’ commitment to excellence in delivering Board solutions and its outstanding contributions as a trusted partner to Board.

Board’s Partner of the Year award is presented to companies that have demonstrated dedication, innovation, and a proven track record in delivering value to their clients. CFO Solutions stood out among a competitive field of partners for its continuous efforts to leverage Board’s cutting-edge decision-making platform to drive client success.

CFO Solutions has been working in close collaboration with Board for several years, leveraging the platform’s robust capabilities to offer tailored solutions to its clients. The partnership has resulted in streamlined financial planning, budgeting, forecasting, and reporting processes, providing CFO Solutions’ clients with the agility and data-driven insights needed to succeed in today’s dynamic business environment. As CFO Solutions continues to strengthen their partnership with Board, they look forward to further innovations and success.

About CFO Solutions: The firm was founded by industry professionals with expertise as software developers, “Big 4” consultants, and Corporate Controller/CPAs. The CFO Solutions team has collectively amassed over 100 years of consulting experience for Fortune 1000 companies, and our services encompass the full cycle of any business intelligence or budgeting and planning initiative. We help clients define business processes, determine the right technology solution, create a solution roadmap, and implement and support the vision.

About Board: Board is a global leader in decision-making software that enables organizations to take a unified approach to planning, analytics, and business intelligence. Their platform empowers organizations to make informed decisions, streamline processes, and achieve better business outcomes.

Introduction

As it moved to Planful for financial planning and close and consolidation, it looked upstream and recognized account reconciliations as the key to faster, more accurate financial data. Adding Adra eliminated repetition and added accountability to its reconciliation process, saving as much as one day per day for its accounting team.

Ferraro Foods delivers delicious products to over 8,000 customers in 26 states. As its business grew and locations/subsidiaries multiplied, it became more difficult to gain an accurate and timely view into the company’s financial performance. Financial data resided in one of two ERP systems, and with consolidations run in Excel, it wasn’t just hard to resolve errors; they weren’t even noticed until the close process was in motion or completed.

With a transition to Planful already underway, Johann and team decided to also streamline its financial performance management processes from the very beginning, at reconciliation, by automating and eliminating much of the manual effort. The company had relied on an email- and spreadsheet-driven process that was entirely manual and lacked accountability.

With the help of CFO solutions, a certified Adra implementer, Ferraro Foods was able to gain control of their financial close calendar and automate their large volume reconciliations.

Adding Adra for Better, Faster Large-Volume Reconciliations

Ferraro Foods chose to enhance its Planful implementation by automating their reconciliation process using Adra by Trintech to standardize, automate, and accelerate reconciliation workflows. It would also make data more trusted as it flowed into close and consolidation processes, and beyond.

Ferraro Foods particularly relies on Adra Matcher to reduce time spent on month-end transaction matching. It can match and reconcile large volumes of transactions quickly and accurately including daily banking transactions, even across different systems and data sources. This takes the repetition out of balance sheet reconciliation for a financial close that’s fast, accurate, and easy to manage while allowing time to concentrate on the most important accounts.

“Reconciliation takes a lot of time, but it’s mostly a redundant effort,” added Johann. “I’d say 80% of the work is just matching across thousands of transactions. So don’t do it; let Adra take care of it. Adra turns hours into an hour, or less. Across our team of four, Adra saves each about two hours per day. We’re saving a day’s worth of effort every day.”

That time saved during reconciliation gives analysts the freedom and flexibility to focus on more valuable efforts, and the reconciliations from Adra immediately flow into Planful to kickstart close and consolidation.

Taking Control of Period End Close Management

By implementing Adra, Ferraro Foods significantly improved visibility and gained control of their financial close calendar. With Adra’s period-end close and task management features, Ferraro Foods was able to track and monitor close activities, assign and ensure completion of close tasks, set deadlines, and collaborate across teams and people.

“Just like Planful gives us visibility into and control over our financial consolidation process, Adra gives us the same for reconciliation,” Johann said. “Are the account reconciliations done? Are they done correctly? Have they been submitted on time? There’s a constant set of checks and balances to ensure all components of our close process are done correctly and on time. And, we can rely on Planful as the system of record for auditing, too, because we trust the data.”

As a result, Ferraro Foods has achieved impressive results with their close duration reduced from 10 business days to just four-and-a-half days. This improvement was attributed to Adra’s reconciliation capabilities, enabling the identification and resolution of errors before the close process commenced.

View the article here: https://planful.com/customer-stories/ferraro-foods/

Congratulations to two of the most recent CFO Solutions employees to become a OneStream Software Certified Professional (OCP) by passing OneStream’s Lead Architect exam.
 
Outstanding work to Lindsey Smith and Patrick Jackman on this impressive achievement!
 
Learn more about CFO Solutions and our team here: https://bit.ly/3xn6a36

CFO Solutions UK Announcement

CFO Solutions Announces Business Expansion into the UK to offer EPM and BI Financial Services

Amherst, MA, January, 2022 — CFO Solutions, a professional services firm specializing in Enterprise Performance Management and Business Intelligence products and solutions, announce expanding their organization internationally, into the United Kingdom. 

CFO Solutions was founded in 2005 by former Big 4 Principals specializing in end to end deployment of finance technologies.   Our focus and extensive experience in this space has fostered our ability to grow and expand our strategic partnerships with our trusted technology partners.  Given the global scope of demand for services in this area, CFO Solutions has added a team of highly qualified employees to service the UK & Europe as a whole more effectively.  

“We are very excited to enter this chapter of our organizational growth to more effectively serve our customers without any compromise of delivery or unnecessary delays due to time zones.  Our continued focus in the UK / Europe will remain with our trusted EPM / BI / Close Management technology partners to further provide expert services to the office of finance & the CFO.”

About CFO Solutions

The CFO Solutions team has collectively amassed over 100 years of consulting experience for Fortune 1000 companies. With experience that covers a multitude of industries including Healthcare, Manufacturing, CPG, Insurance, Financial Services, Legal, Public Accounting, Technology Research, Hospitality, and Real Estate. Projects range from Staff augmentation &  support to full development and implementation of an EPM software solution at multinational companies.

CFO Solutions is focused on improving our clients’ ability to collect, manage and report financial and operational information, with services that encompass the full cycle of any business intelligence, consolidation, close management, or budgeting and planning initiative. CFO Solutions helps clients define business processes, determine the right technology solution, create a solution roadmap, and implement and support the vision.

Workiva Marketplace debuts with both Workiva-built and partner offerings that simplify complex reporting and compliance problems

AMES, Iowa–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Workiva Inc. (NYSE:WK), today launched The Workiva Marketplace, filled with more than 140 Workiva-built and partner templates, services and 60 no-code connectors that streamline existing processes and solve new business problems all within the Workiva cloud platform’s connected and secure ecosystem.

The Workiva Marketplace’s offerings include: process checklists, carefully organized and linked reports, style guides, perfectly formatted presentations, and more. Accounting, audit, financial planning & analysis, financial services, and legal teams can easily add templates or connectors directly into an existing Workiva workspace and optimize workflow with process automation, practical examples, and industry best practices.

Comments on the News :

• “There is an enormous opportunity for organizations to scale their business operations efficiently and cost effectively by leveraging Workiva’s connected ecosystem,” said Julie Iskow, COO of Workiva. “The Workiva Marketplace allows users to find tools, templates, connectors and applications that make using our platform faster and easier. It also easily connects customers with our trusted, best-in-industry consulting and technology partners and can extend the value of our platform for our users.”
• “For years, corporate accounting and financial reporting teams have operated separately due simply to the nature of data collection and reporting processes, and this can lead to a myriad of complications at the end of the reporting period,” said Mike Whitmire, CEO & Co-founder of FloQast. “Using FloQast’s direct API connector available in The Workiva Marketplace, accounting and finance teams automate and accelerate the financial close and disclosure process, bridging the gap between them, which adds value by providing greater visibility into the close and reconciliation process, and enabling a more accurate and efficient reporting process.”
• “As a partner, Clearview Group is thrilled to join Workiva for the launch of the new Marketplace,” said Scott Freinberg, Director of Advisory Services at Clearview. “Clients and partners will now be able to more efficiently access industry-leading templates and tools to transform their processes and technology. Workiva consistently works to enhance their products and services for their customers, and we could not be more honored to partner with them on this initiative.”
• “I am really impressed with the variety of templates and connectors available in the new Marketplace, especially with SOX, Internal Controls, and Management reporting,” said Trevor Harris, SOX Manager of NXP Semiconductors. “I like that the Marketplace is easy to navigate and that my team can easily incorporate these industry best practices immediately. The time savings alone from not having to start at square one is going to be priceless. This will really let me do more with my data inside the Workiva platform.”

Workiva Marketplace Innovators :

Partners are extending the use of the platform with mutual clients by creating new services and solutions on top of the Workiva platform that solve customers’ unique business challenges.

Argyle, BlackLine, Business Wire, CFO Solutions, Clearview Group, Column5 Consulting, Fastpath Solutions, F.H. Black & Company Inc., FloQast, Keyrus Consulting, OneCloud, Planalytix, PwC, Sentieo, and Trintech are among the Workiva partners that played a crucial role in the launch of the Marketplace by contributing meaningful templates, services and content that is readily available for customers to add to their workspaces and use.

Workiva has a strong partner ecosystem, with over 200 industry-leading business and technology advisory firms that are available to assist customers as they expand their use of the Workiva Platform.

Read the full press release here

ORS Medco distributes safety and security products, tools, body shop and repair products, welding supplies, paint, chemicals, and abrasives.

Read this case study to learn how we helped ORS Medco completed an on-time implementation of Infor d/EPM and have reduced the time to achieve financial consolidations by 67%.

Read the full article and download ORS Medco case study here

Congratulations to CFO Solution’s Solution Architect, Cash Collins for being named as an inaugural member of the Planful Champions Club.

50 Planful customers, partners, and employees have been selected to join the esteemed Planful Champions Club to share their Planful experience with their network. The goal is to connect with colleagues and associates to further develop their Planful knowledge base and expertise.

“We are thrilled to recognize and welcome the inaugural class of Planful champions,” Grant Halloran, CEO from Planful said, “These professionals represent an initial group of the most ardent Planful enthusiasts and power users across our customers, partners, and employees. Congratulations to our Planful champions.”

Members of the Planful Champions Club receive a number of benefits, including advanced training, access to Planful networking + knowledge-sharing opportunities, and will also be invited to exclusive events.

Congratulations, Cash!