BPM: What is the benefit of finance being less involved in the actual forecasting?

Gonzales: Well, it's twofold. The main benefit is increased accountability and ownership. We wanted to stress the accountability among P&L owners and department heads and also have them personally own and be responsible for their budgets and forecasts. We want to say, "This is your P&L, your forecast. You own it. Here is a tool to manage your business, to know what's in your numbers. It's not a secret black box that finance holds off in the back."

The second thing is: We wanted to make our financial planning and analysis function more of a value-add function. We were mired in creating budgeting and forecasting models, linking and consolidating all these models, and then making sure everything worked properly. We wanted and needed to do more analysis. We wanted to dig into the numbers, look at the ratios, look at the operational statistics so that we could help the department heads and P&L owners understand and run their business better. Not so much say, "OK, your forecast is coming in over budget; you really need to work on getting that down," but more, "Yes, your forecast is over budget, but if you look at the ratio you're using on your nurses for your diabetes product, that's where you're really starting to get into some trouble." That's the direction we would like to go.

BPM: How did you go about shopping for BPM software?

Gonzales: I headed up the RFP process and the team that evaluated products. We looked at some midmarket products, but we also focused strongly on the Oracle and PeopleSoft solutions because we were going to be converting to one or the other for our general ledger, and the ease of being integrated was very desirable. The team sat in on demonstrations for all these software packages, and in some cases we had two or three demos. We considered Adaptive Planning mainly because our consultants, Axis Accounting, said, "This could be something that would interest you. You should listen to it." We went into it -- I don't want to say skeptical -- but not expecting much.

BPM: Who was on your project team? Were they people in finance?

Gonzales: It was mostly people in finance and accounting. That was the core team. We did consult with our IT department and with some operations staff. Once we agreed on a solution, we brought it to our controller, senior vice president of finance, and CFO.

BPM: How did you consult with the line-of-business managers?

Gonzales: After our last budget, we had a meeting with all of the FP&A staff, our COO, the CFO, and various department heads. From them we gleaned both the good and the bad from the budget process. We learned which areas they wanted improvement on that were specific to their departments and their needs. And we issued a survey with questions like, "What did you think about the budget process? How did you like it? What can be changed?" We knew we couldn't satisfy everyone, but we took the far-reaching, guiding principles that came out of this process and tried to incorporate them into the search.

BPM: Did you have any concerns about your vendor's size?

Gonzales: When we went into it, we didn't know much about them. Yes, they were a newer company. Oracle is a gigantic, fully integrated suite, whereas Adaptive Planning is strictly focused on budgeting, forecasting, and reporting. To our surprise, Adaptive Planning was by far the best tool we evaluated. We really examined the RFP and paid attention to the demos. People shouldn't focus so much on the size of the company, but rather go in with an open mind, because even the smallest company can turn out to give you -- more than likely will give you -- much better service.

BPM: So you feel that a small vendor might actually have an advantage?

Gonzales: Absolutely. The thing that really set Adaptive Planning apart from the other vendors was when we came back to them after the initial demo and laid out our concerns and questions. With our revenue recognition model being so complex, we wanted to be assured that the tool was robust enough to meet our needs. They said, "We could give you an answer because we know our product has that functionality, but it's not going to mean a whole lot to you. Why don't you give us 30 minutes of your time on the phone, and we'll build a demo model in Adaptive Planning so that you can see what it's capable of." We spent about 30 minutes on the phone and they came back a couple days later with a demo model basically proving, "Yes, this can be done."

Also, when you get a product that's multiple versions in, they've gotten requests from so many different companies -- and they've incorporated all these requests into the product -- that it's very, very complicated. Oracle's budgeting and forecasting and business performance management modules can do everything. I mean, any bells and whistles you want, they have it: graphics, charting, formatting. But when you look at the interface, it overwhelms you. You have all these different options, and for the nonfinancial manager, that requires a lot of training time and effort.

BPM: What advice would you give someone just embarking on the purchase process?

Gonzales: Collaborate with as many groups in the organization as possible. When I came here, we were using a huge Excel model built strictly by finance people. As a result, whenever we would present a forecast or a budget, the department heads and the process owners would say, "This doesn't make sense." Or "That's not representative of where my budget needs to be." Or "I can't get to the same answer because you're looking at it differently."

In the selection process, what we tried to do is think about the future and include all those process owners. We sought their input -- what they wanted, how they wanted to see it, the things that they would like to use -- and we went into the RFP with them in mind. In the end, this is a tool to help them run their business better, and they are not in the business of forecasting and budgeting. They have to run the company, not spend time being trained on a tool to help them complete the budget and forecast.