formerly FinancialForce
formerly FinancialForce
“Revenue forecasting is one of the biggest things that we do. Pulling data from our opportunities in sales and analyzing what the forecast is going to look like for revenue over the next 12 months is hugely critical for us.”
Sean McDermott, CEO, Windward Consulting
As happens with many growing businesses, Windward Consulting had developed various data and technology silos across the organization. With data distributed across finance, sales, and other departments, the company found it difficult to confidently and accurately forecast opportunities and risks over the coming quarters.
Additionally, Windward sought a way to protect cash flow by minimizing days sales outstanding (DSO), align all employees to key business growth and profitability metrics, and glean new insights from its disparate data sources-all goals that would traditionally require hiring additional IT and back office staff.
By standardizing on one end-to-end business platform with Salesforce CRM and Certinia ERP Cloud and Professional Services (PS) Cloud, Windward has reduced IT costs, broken down departmental silos, and gained a complete picture of the business.
Windward's CEO implemented a strict "no Microsoft Excel" policy. Though initially controversial with accounting staff, the policy encourages the use of dynamic, live reports and actionable analytics.
Digital transformation at Windward has allowed the business to more easily turn key business levers-utilization, average rate structures, and average consultant costs-to improve project profitability.
Sean McDermott, CEO, sees Windward's digital transformation as a success in large part because he achieved his goal of integrating technologies across the business and opening up access to the data residing in those systems. In turn, this has helped align the organization to the business goals he cares most about as CEO. With Certinia and Salesforce, Windward managers have gained a 360-degree view across opportunities, project backlog, contract details, performance obligations, resource capacity, skill requirements, billing milestones, and even customer satisfaction.
