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Advisory firms hedge. It is the rational move: certify on four or five platforms, recommend whichever fits the deal, and never marry a vendor. So when a firm bets its entire EPM practice on a single platform, that decision carries information.
It carries even more when the person making it has seen the platform from the inside.
Five Years of Watching This Space
George Khalil, the founder of EL ROI Advisory, was one of Drivetrain's earliest Customer Success hires in North America. He saw firsthand what an empowered, product-driven team can deliver, and he has spent the five years since watching the EPM category closely: first as it consolidated, and more recently as it has been fundamentally challenged by AI and frontier models.
His read on that period is blunt. Most planning platforms have responded to AI at the margins. Drivetrain embraced the test head-on, harnessing AI to power complete business planning rather than bolting it onto the edges. That conviction is why EL ROI Advisory is betting exclusively on Drivetrain in the EPM space.
About EL ROI Advisory
EL ROI Advisory is a specialized advisory firm focused exclusively on AI-native platforms across EPM, ERP, and billing, helping CFOs and finance leaders modernize how their organizations plan, close, and grow. The firm is anchored by a senior core of consultants with deep practitioner backgrounds in corporate finance and accounting, and its team has advised and delivered EPM and ERP solutions for more than 100 organizations, from high-growth startups to established enterprises.
That exclusive focus on AI-native platforms is not just a portfolio choice; it is how the firm operates. EL ROI applies AI across the implementation lifecycle itself to compress timelines and effort, so customers realize ROI in hours or weeks rather than months. Having worked hands-on with the operating, financial, and three-statement models of over 100 organizations, the team knows exactly where implementations break down and what it takes to make them succeed.
The firm is deliberately industry-agnostic, with deep engagement experience across Professional Services, High-Growth SaaS, Professional Sports, Insurance, Pharmaceuticals, Bio-Med Research, Manufacturing, and Consumer Goods. Its footprint today is North America, with a roadmap to expand into additional regions.
Planning at the Speed of AI
EL ROI's clients are high-growth businesses optimizing how they plan and forecast, and the constraint they keep hitting is the same one: traditional tooling only moves at the speed of the human building the model in Excel. When the business changes weekly, a planning stack that updates monthly is a liability.
That is the gap this partnership closes. Drivetrain gives EL ROI's clients a platform where reporting, planning, and forecasting move at the speed of AI, and EL ROI's delivery model means they get there in weeks, not quarters. Any organization that needs to report, plan, and forecast at that speed is a natural fit for the combination.
"Drivetrain's power lies in its people: a talented, committed, and relentlessly driven team. The product is the core focus of the entire organization, and it is what drives every success they have earned. That is why we are betting exclusively on Drivetrain in the EPM space."
— George Khalil, CPA, Founder and Principal, EL ROI Advisory
Looking Ahead
There is a particular kind of validation in a partner who knows you from the inside and chooses you anyway, exclusively. We are proud to have earned that from George and the EL ROI Advisory team, and we intend to keep earning it.
The two teams will work together on co-delivery and go-to-market across North America in the months ahead. If you are a finance leader who wants planning that moves at the speed of your business, or you are evaluating EPM platforms and want an advisor who has seen this category from every angle, we would love to talk.
Praveen Rajaretnam is Head of Product Marketing & Partnerships at Drivetrain, with over 15 years of experience building high-performance marketing teams and launching B2B SaaS products. Through his work at Drivetrain, an AI-native FP&A platform used by finance leaders globally, he has developed a deep, practitioner-informed understanding of how CFOs and finance teams plan, report, and drive business performance. He co-founded Wooplr, a social commerce platform that became India's second-largest social commerce platform. Before that, Praveen led product marketing at Freshworks and InMobi and started his career as a software engineer at McAfee. At Drivetrain, Praveen writes about product marketing, go-to-market strategy, and building strategic partnerships in B2B SaaS.
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