Planning for the Unplannable with Workday Adaptive Planning, implemented by GK Horizons.
Case Study Snapshot
| Organisation | Disaster Relief Australia |
| Sector | Not for Profit / Disaster Response |
| Planning Platform | Workday Adaptive Planning |
| GK Horizons Role | Planning Design, Implementation, Enablement & Support |
| Planning Focus | Budgeting, Forecasting, Scenario Modelling, Decision & Planning Governance |
| Key Outcomes | Faster Forecasting, Stronger Governance, Organisation-wide Adoption of Standard Planning Principles & Improved Transparency |
| Decision Context | High-uncertainty, Donor-funded, Operationally distributed organisation requiring rapid, explainable funding and Resource allocation decisions. |
About Disaster Relief Australia
Disaster Relief Australia operates in high-uncertainty, high-accountability environments where funding, operational readiness, and decision speed directly affect frontline outcomes.
Disaster Relief Australia (DRA) operates across a diverse national network of teams, volunteers, and programs, delivering support in complex and often unpredictable environments. The organisation manages a wide range of funding sources, operational commitments, and governance obligations, all of which must be aligned to ensure resources are directed where they are needed most.
As DRA’s operational footprint grew, leadership needed a clearer, more connected view of financial position, funding requirements, and response readiness. Planning and reporting information increasingly lived in separate spreadsheets and systems, making it difficult to maintain a consistent, organisation-wide picture and slowing the leadership conversations needed to make timely, confident decisions.
Why Choose Workday Adaptive Planning
DRA needed a planning platform that could do more than consolidate numbers. Leadership required a shared environment where assumptions were visible, funding sources and uses could be clearly linked, and different stakeholders could access views of the same data aligned to the decisions they were responsible for making.
A key priority was moving toward a more bottom-up approach to budgeting, giving managers genuine ownership of their plans and allowing frontline reality to flow directly into organisational planning. For senior management, this created a clearer understanding of funding requirements, operational constraints, and the trade-offs involved in committing resources under uncertainty.
“When I saw the planning sheets, I knew the team would get it. They’d be able to use it from day one.”
Mark Welton, CFO, Disaster Relief Australia
Workday Adaptive Planning provided that foundation, bringing structure to the planning process while preserving the flexibility DRA needed to respond to changing operational and funding conditions.
Why Work with GK Horizons
For Disaster Relief Australia, selecting a planning partner was about finding a team that could translate organisational intent into a practical, working planning model, rather than simply configuring software.
Mark Welton, CFO of DRA, was looking for a partner who could engage with both finance and operational leaders, challenge assumptions constructively, and help shape a planning environment that reflected how the organisation actually operates across programs, funding sources, and stakeholders.
“We needed someone who understood not just the platform, but how we work as an organisation. They weren’t afraid to question our assumptions and help us think through what the model really needed to support.”
GK Horizons worked closely with DRA to design a planning model that balanced structure with flexibility—supporting bottom-up input from budget holders while giving leadership a consistent, organisation-wide view of funding, forecasts, and operational priorities.
The result was a collaborative engagement focused less on implementation milestones and more on building a planning foundation that could support confident, explainable decision-making as the organisation continues to grow and respond to changing conditions.
How Disaster Relief Australia Uses Workday Adaptive Planning to Govern Decisions at Scale
Workday Adaptive Planning is embedded in DRA’s day-to-day financial operations. Actuals flow from Xero through DRA’s data warehouse into the platform, giving finance immediate visibility across budgets, forecasts, and variances.
More than 30 contributors across departments, projects, and grant areas participate in bottom-up budgeting, with forecasts rolling up to provide leadership with a clear, organisation-wide view of resource requirements and funding exposure.
Forecasting is continuous. DRA runs monthly rolling forecasts, quarterly reforecasts, and multi-year outlooks to manage uncertainty driven by disaster events and funding cycles, allowing leadership to test scenarios and adjust assumptions as conditions change.
“I use Workday Adaptive Planning every single day. I’m constantly checking scenarios and adjusting assumptions.”
Mark Welton, CFO, Disaster Relief Australia
Management and board reporting is produced using OfficeConnect, removing manual copy-and-paste processes while maintaining confidence through transparent, repeatable planning logic.
What Disaster Relief Australia Has Gained
The shift to Workday Adaptive Planning has fundamentally changed how DRA plans and makes decisions.
“What’s changed most is where we spend our time. Instead of maintaining spreadsheets or rebuilding reports, we’re reviewing results, testing scenarios, and focusing on decisions. It gets us to insight much faster.”
Mark Welton, CFO, Disaster Relief Australia
Today, planning insight that once lived in spreadsheets is embedded in a shared, transparent environment, giving leadership and budget holders confidence in both the numbers and the decisions built on them.
As a result, DRA now benefits from:
- stronger planning governance and auditability
- clear traceability from funding source to outcome
- faster, more confident decision-making
- broader ownership of budgets and forecasts
- reduced reliance on individual knowledge
“It’s given me confidence – confidence in the numbers, and confidence that we can show exactly how funds are being used.”
Mark Welton, CFO, Disaster Relief Australia
Where to Next
DRA views planning as an evolving capability rather than a finished project. The next phase focuses on integrating more non-financial data, such as volunteer and operational metrics, expanding executive scenario modelling, and exploring predictive and AI-driven capabilities as they mature within the platform.
“I know we’re only using part of what the platform can do. There’s a lot more value there, and we’ll keep building towards it.”
Mark Welton, CFO, Disaster Relief Australia
With a strong planning foundation in place, DRA is extending its decision horizon, strengthening its ability to respond to uncertainty not just today, but as its mission and operating environment continue to evolve.
