Techtronic Industries (TTI), a global manufacturer of power tools and equipment, is dedicated to improving the lives of homeowners and tradespeople around the world. “It’s a race without a finish line, so we keep running and we keep growing,” says Grant Edhouse, chief financial officer and chief operating officer of the company’s business unit in Australia and New Zealand (ANZ). “And we don't see that slowing down.”
Since Edhouse joined TTI in 2008, its annual revenue in ANZ has grown 10x to in excess of $1 billion AUD. The company’s finance technology couldn’t keep up with the rapid expansion, Edhouse says, and the finance team “only had enough time to really hit the corporate reporting deadlines.” Edhouse and his colleagues wanted to move the business forward with robust strategic planning, not just better report generation. “Without a true plan, it's hard to rally people around shared objectives,” he says.
A powerful tool to drive profitability and growth
TTI in ANZ adopted Anaplan for Finance in 2019, with two overarching goals: Democratizing finance processes and adding structure. “I wanted to put forecasting in the hands of the managers who led the functions, and push out reporting to the wider business,” Edhouse recalls.
Since that successful effort, the Anaplan environment has grown to include OpEx Planning, Balance Sheet and Cash Flow planning, Sales Coverage and Capacity Planning, Marketing Performance Management, and Cost to Serve.
Edhouse notes that the Cost to Serve model, fueled by automatic data feeds from across the business, enables TTI ANZ to identify common characteristics of its most profitable customers. “It has changed the thinking within the commercial teams,” Edhouse says, because they use information from the model to reduce costs for both TTI and its customers. “It’s a powerful tool to drive profitability and growth.”
Routine financial processes 40% faster
With Anaplan, routine finance processes at TTI ANZ are as much as 40% faster. “Our end-of-month closing cycle used to take 10 days to complete, and this is now down to six,” Edhouse says. The extra time elevates the value that TTI financial analysts can provide. “After Anaplan, we had more time to evaluate the results, ask questions, and make alterations," he explains.
The faster processes are also more granular and accurate. “You can be agile, but you've still got to have the right information to make decisions quickly,” Edhouse explains. “We've connected the parts of our business that drive either cost or revenue, and being able to model that, and see those outcomes very quickly, helps the decision-making process.”
Connectedness has shifted the way the business interacts with finance. “The biggest impact has been the change in mindset from having finance as a separate function to having that intimately connected with [a] much wider group through the Anaplan platform,” he says. Finance partners with teams across the company and supports financial processes, but business units do the day-to-day work in Anaplan and are accountable for performance against measurements that they created. And because people across the business collaborate on their teams’ forecasts and finances, Edhouse can run a lean finance team.
“We get a lot of value by switching to Anaplan,” Edhouse sums up. “Planning has become a lot more dynamic and agile. We're constantly planning and replanning — as risks or opportunities emerge — to understand what the impact would be. Knowing the work that’s gone into building the [Anaplan] models … gives me confidence that I can rely on the information that we use to make decisions.”
