Founded in 2000, Claim Central is a global claims solutions business headquartered in Sydney. It provides services, technology, and data insights to make managing claims easier. Claim Central is trusted by many leading insurers, brokers, and underwriters globally, with offices in the United States, New Zealand, and South Africa.
When Matt Lewis, CFO of Claim Central, joined the organisation in 2019, his first initiative was to lead their FP&A Transformation (budgeting, forecasting, and reporting process). “The existing excel processes were struggling to keep pace with the increasing complexity of the business”. The business needed a reliable planning solution that would support strategy decisions. Alongside was Kiki Kang, Finance Manager, who was already equipped with prior Workday Adaptive Planning (EPM/CPM solution) knowledge, understood the importance of this task.
“Not only was the team knowledgeable and supportive, they were also responsive and worked well with the Claim Central team”
Workday Adaptive Planning was a cost effective and user-friendly solution for Claim Central, in comparison to other platforms. Working closely with Matt’s team, GK Horizons was able to design the unique models with a future proof state in mind. “Not only was the team knowledgeable and supportive, they were also responsive and worked well with the Claim Central team”. Kiki says. The focus and dedication of the finance team allowed GK Horizons to work seamlessly and with no delay in implementing the solution. “This was completed in less than 3 months. The timeframe was impressive” Kiki says.
This was just one example of the inefficiencies and challenges Claim Central faced with an excel driven process. There was a reliance of 10 different spreadsheets to manage the complexities of their business lines, as well as master data being extracted from internal platforms.
This was collated into one master spreadsheet, which often, due to its size would break from time to time. As Kiki noted further “It was especially difficult given we had multiple overseas entities to consider. Drilling down to into data seemed like an impossible task”.
It also lacked the flexibility the team needed to produce reports on an ad-hoc basis as required by the board. “There was no capability to provide deep insights to support strategic decisions” Kiki says.
Workday Adaptive Planning proved to be a valuable investment. As Kiki noted “we have reduced our hours in data collation process and now use this time for more insightful commentary”.
“we have reduced our hours in data collation process and now use this time for more insightful commentary”
Scenario Modelling can now be done as soon as assumptions are updated within Adaptive. This was particularly important during COVID as the board needed to understand the impact to bottom line. “With how our solution was designed, we’ve been in a great position to run COVID-19 scenarios to see how this would affect the P/L and cashflow” Kiki says.
Reliable and automated data also saw a shift in how easy it was for the Consolidation process. “We have integrated with our ERP, master and payroll data” Kiki says. Build-up of confidence in data (less human/manual process errors) meant it was also easier to look at the longer-term, more comprehensive impacts. “We have a rolling forecast which looks out to 5 years” Kiki says.
Stakeholders have welcomed this change as the finance team is able to provide prompt responses to their queries as well as insights to support other business units.
Claim Central was able navigate through the complexities of building reports to suit different audiences. “We are dealing with global companies, with different financial years and different data requirements” Kiki says. “Office Connect is very flexible, especially when we need to tweak different views on margins for different divisions. This has been a great value add”.
Monthly and yearly reports are now easily prepared. The user-friendly application requires only single touch to refresh updated data throughout the PowerPoint presentations. Acquiring new businesses or internal business restructure reporting has been made easier. Providing timely, relevant, and accurate data to its stakeholders has raised the finance team’s reputation.
“Office Connect is very flexible, especially when we need to tweak different views on margins for different divisions”
Both Matt and Kiki are driven to continually refine their month and year end processes.
As their business grows, Workday Adaptive Planning provides confidence in addressing the impacts of these developments.
Claim Central’s finance team has been self-sufficient over the last few years and GK Horizons has been there to provide any additional support report. “GK Horizons understands our business well and provides support when we need it”.
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