The only financial model template you'll ever need—just plug in your actuals to see projections
Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.
.svg)
Snapshot of Blackthorn
Integrations
Key Challenges Faced
Working with an FP&A tool that couldn’t integrate with its core accounting solution
.webp)
Efficiency of the tool undermined by its lack of flexibility and customization options
.webp)
Had to maintain detailed Excel models in parallel due to the tool’s lack of granularity
When Erik Meyer, Senior VP Finance, joined the Finance team at Blackthorn, he inherited a financial planning and analysis (FP&A) solution, one with a nice UI and dashboard. His team liked using it well enough, but it wasn’t long before he discovered that it suffered from some key functional issues and a built-in complexity that ultimately required him to find a new solution.
One of the biggest problems for Meyer was that the modeling capabilities of the FP&A tool they were using lacked the granularity that traditional finance professionals typically preferred for reporting, something that Excel could accommodate.
As a result, Meyer and his team had to build and maintain their financial model in Excel in parallel with the models in the FP&A tool. The tool company invested in was supposed to help the company eliminate the need to use Excel for its FP&A. However, while it did offer a spreadsheet-like feel, the learning curve was too steep, and the tool itself wasn't sophisticated or detailed enough to replace Excel altogether.
Meyer added that finance people love Excel, “Ripping Excel out of a finance person's hands is pretty tough because you need that level of flexibility you get in Excel.”
It’s certainly true that while Excel spreadsheets have their limitations and are more error-prone, they lend themselves beautifully to detailed financial models. When all the different formulas in different worksheets are properly synced up, spreadsheets give finance teams the ability to update assumptions and drivers on the fly and easily filter their data in highly detailed ways.
Meyer’s need for more detailed reporting was the main reason he continued to use his Excel model even though he had an FP&A tool. “It's not that I think the forecast [from the tool] was incorrect. It was tough to see the details, for example, getting vendor-level reporting or seeing the big drivers in the model. In Excel, you can get as granular as you want.” However, the fact remained, Meyer’s team was spending a lot of time updating those models.
Meyer’s expectations for an FP&A software were simple—he wanted flexibility and efficiency. However, the solution the company had invested in wasn’t offering much of either.
.svg)
FP&A tools are great, but they have to be easy to use and net positive.
He said the problem here was less an issue of functionality, but of the inherent complexity of the tool he inherited, “I think the functionality was there in the platform, but I didn't have the time to go through and learn all the nuances of trying to bring in a new metric.”
He knew the platform the team was using would require a lot of complex configuration to get the level of detail Meyer needed in his forecasting and reports, and he didn’t have 6-9 months to stand up a model. What he needed was a platform he could get up and running with quickly.
So, while the platform offered some of the functionality he needed, its inherent complexity undermined any efficiency he might gain from using it. The Blackthorn team simply did not have the energy or resources—time and people—to spend on updating the Excel models they had to run in parallel or doing the time-consuming and complex configuration necessary to eliminate the need for that.
Another issue that Meyer had to deal with was figuring out how to access and integrate the data from Rillet, the company’s new ERP, into the FP&A platform his team was using. However, the platform didn’t offer a native integration for Rillet.
In order to work with their accounting data, data had to be imported each month.
The whole process was not only time-consuming but also pretty complicated. “It was just too much, too many moving parts,” he said. That was when he realized he had two options—he could either go back to using Excel for modeling or he could start looking for another financial planning and analysis (FP&A) solution.
With his Excel model still up and running, Meyer didn’t need to switch to a new FP&A software. He could continue to rely on his Excel model for reporting. However, while Excel offers him the ultimate flexibility, Meyer said he also values efficiency, “We wanted something that could take out a lot of the manual inputs and provide more real-time reporting.”
So, Meyer decided to start looking for a suitable replacement—one that would strike the right balance between flexibility and ease of use. He found it in Drivetrain.
Meyer took his time looking for a new solution. Like any smart finance leader, he explored a number of options before deciding to make the switch.
Meyer first considered a couple of solutions he’d used at other companies before coming to Blackthorn. However, both were tailored to larger enterprises, making the features they offered and the associated price tag an overkill for a mid-market company like Blackthorn.
He then explored a couple of solutions targeted toward smaller businesses but found them lacking some of the features he needed. Most notably, they lacked a native integration with Rillet, which was at the top of his “must-have” feature list. Meyer explained that the company was really happy with Rillet as an accounting platform and they didn’t want to have to use something else.
Eventually, Meyer circled back around to Drivetrain—a solution he’d heard about a few months earlier. After getting a demo and talking through his use case and concerns with Drivetrain, Meyer was convinced that he’d found the solution—one that offered the ease, flexibility, and efficiency he was looking for, and the granularity the other platform was lacking.
When Blackthorn started working with Drivetrain, integration with Rillet was a top priority. Drivetrain’s onboarding team was able to help Meyer accomplish this quickly and easily.
Meyer noted that connecting with Salesforce was also easier than he expected compared to other tools he’d seen and worked with in the past. He could map the fields himself and pull in pipeline data for predictive forecasting. He was also pleasantly surprised by how effortlessly they could connect with other external data sources like Google Sheets.
With all their data now in one place, the finance team could slice and dice the data exactly the way they wanted—for example, vendor, by department, by month, making it much easier to analyze the reason for any increases in spend. In addition, Drivetrain’s integration with Slack makes it easy to get fast answers about any questions they might have about different vendor spends.
Some software have a tendency to lock down the data, impacting user flexibility. Drivetrain’s goal is to empower users to not only aggregate data but also pivot or analyze it however they want for their financial models and predictive forecasting.
Drivetrain’s standard onboarding is 4-6 weeks, and the Blackthorn team was up and running on the platform in around six.
While Drivetrain is powerful under the hood, it’s also a very intuitive and easy-to-use platform. This, combined with Meyer’s previous experience with using FP&A tools for reporting and modeling, enabled him to set up his models pretty quickly.
The team also used the role-based access control feature to ensure sensitive reports and data were shared with a select group of stakeholders. This helped them better prepare for quarterly business reviews and finance meetings. The feedback from the investors has been really positive—they appreciate the depth of the insights and data presented in the monthly reports.
Meyer said that the more he and his team use Drivetrain, the more ways they discover to optimize it for their needs. For example, the ability to easily create custom metrics has been a game-changer. He explained that custom metrics gives them a lot of flexibility in their models, rivaling that of Excel.
Being able to measure things with the flexibility of Excel is a major differentiator.
One of Blackthorn’s key objectives was to get its Excel models into a user-friendly, flexible platform—a single source of truth—that would provide more granular insights. Drivetrain delivered and now provides Meyer and his finance team easy access to deeper insights from their models and the data behind them.
“We get detailed in our models, well beyond a simple driver-based model with assumptions. Sometimes, we use a top-down approach; at other times, we like to get granular and build it bottom-up from the vendor level.” In Drivetrain, Meyer found the depth of detail he was looking for in an FP&A solution.
Scenario planning has also become more operational and actionable, thanks to Drivetrain. The finance team can easily model different scenarios based on a variety of drivers and then forecast changes in the cost structure in response to the results for a given scenario.
Scenario modeling results in Drivetrain are easy to communicate and easy to understand—especially for the non-finance members in the executive team, allowing them to turn insight into action.
For the first time in my finance career, I've gotten rid of the Excel model. And, most importantly, I think our forecasts are actually more accurate.
Senior VP, Finance
Its comprehensive suite of features, combined with ease of use, gave Blackthorn the flexibility and efficiency they needed—that is, the FP&A software worked for them, instead of the other way around. Let’s see how!
.svg)
