How ADAC Automotive Slashed Its Budget Cycle by 77%

ADAC Automotive is a tier-1 automotive supplier that produces entry systems, door handles, exterior trim, mirrors, and electronics for its global customers. The company was founded in 1975 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and has grown to employ 1,250 people across the state. ADAC Automotive is known for its commitment to quality and innovation, serving a wide range of automotive manufacturers with its advanced products. The company has a significant presence in the automotive industry and is dedicated to maintaining high standards in its operations and customer service. With a strong workforce and a focus on continuous improvement, ADAC Automotive strives to meet the evolving needs of its clients and the market.

The finance team at ADAC Automotive had to manually consolidate and fix errors in budget submissions and monthly financials from departments across the company – leaving little time for higher value, insightful analysis. Finance director Kelly DeWispelaere and her team at ADAC oversee an annual budget of $300 million. But with budget owners spread across 30 departments and six plants, they couldn’t ensure that everyone worked from the same numbers. The team spent so much time manually consolidating each department’s figures, and troubleshooting errors, that they had little room for insightful analysis. They would begin the budget in August and complete it in January – if they were lucky. ADAC runs Microsoft Dynamics AX for its ERP and general ledger (GL), and relied on about 80 separate Excel templates for its budgeting process. Although employees were comfortable using Excel’s familiar interface, they’d hit the limits of what the software could do. For example, the finance team couldn’t automate the collection and consolidation of their budget input figures from each department. Employees would also export data from Dynamics into individual spreadsheets to analyze and report on their numbers. But without reliable version control or audit trails, this practice worked directly against the security, control, and visibility of an enterprise-grade system like Dynamics. ADAC’s finance team needed a more efficient system to end their troubleshooting headaches and free up time to analyze data and uncover new insights to help drive company-wide decisions. They decided to find an FP&A solution that offered the functions they needed, along with seamless and secure integration with their Microsoft ERP, GL and Excel templates.

ADAC chose Vena because it allows them to keep their preferred Microsoft solutions, while gaining much-needed FP&A functionality. Vena’s tight integration with Microsoft Excel and Dynamics makes it easy for DeWispelaere and her team to capture, analyze, and report on data in real time – from a central, controlled, and familiar environment. The following factors also impacted ADAC’s decision: Quick user adoption. Between Vena’s easy-to-use interface and seasoned training team, it didn’t take long for ADAC’s budget owners to become Vena experts. They also don’t need to ask IT for help every time they wanted to run a report. And contributors have virtually no learning curve, as Vena’s templates look exactly like the spreadsheets they used previously. Audit trails. Vena gives ADAC’s budget owners complete visibility into their entire budgeting and month-end close processes. With Vena, they can track every change and see the full story behind every number. If they discover an error, they can easily revert to an earlier version of the document. Faster approvals. ADAC can easily create workflows to automate previously manual submission, review and approval tasks. For example, when an approver accepts or declines a submission, the next person in the workflow will automatically receive an alert. This keeps the entire process flowing smoothly and helps ADAC shorten its budget cycle dramatically. Smarter, more accurate planning. For planning and analysis, Vena allows ADAC’s budget owners to compare their budget numbers to actuals almost in real time – without copying data into Excel or performing a complicated query in their ERP. The insights that come from such variance analyses lead to smarter, more accurate planning, and faster course correction when needed. Improved control over the budget process. Vena gives ADAC’s finance department better visibility into the completion of budget milestones with its workflow designer and status tracking capabilities. Vena automatically notifies budget owners of deadlines, task completions and progress updates, so they can always see the status of the budget at a glance. Greater accuracy. ADAC’s budget owners can easily populate templates with real-time data from Vena’s centralized database. This makes ADAC’s reports and budgets more dynamic and accurate, giving everyone a single source of the truth. Increased mobility. Since Vena and Office 365 are cloud-based, ADAC’s users can approve submissions, distribute reports and more – anytime, anywhere, on any device. Security and controls. Vena’s cloud architecture provides the same level of security required for banking and even military applications. ADAC has full control over who accesses what data – at the department, role, or individual user level. When an employee logs in, they only see the data that is relevant to them or their department.

• Shortened the annual budget cycle by 77%. Last year, ADAC’s finance team spent at least six months completing its budget. After implementing Vena, they did it in six weeks.
• Reconciled data in minutes. Using real-time data from their Dynamics GL allowed ADAC to cut their month-end financial reporting from a full day to just 15 minutes.
• Improved reporting. ADAC’s reports are now consistent, dynamic, and accurate – containing the latest data from their Dynamics ERP and GL. In addition, budget owners can run ad-hoc reports at any time.
• Reduced its Excel templates by 80%. ADAC used to send 80 separate spreadsheets to its budget contributors each month. With Vena, it only has to manage 10 centralized templates for the same number of contributors. And in the event a budget owner finds an error in a template, they only need to correct it once in Vena instead of fixing and re-sending multiple spreadsheets to everyone involved.
• Improved collaboration and insights. Accessing real-time numbers from its budget and GL allows ADAC’s finance team to provide senior leadership with valuable insights and analysis – in a fraction of the time that it used to take.

• 77% reduction in ADAC’s annual budget cycle
• 80% decrease in disconnected Excel templates to manage
• 15 min is all it takes for month-end reporting