Ferraro Foods Streamlines Reconciliations, Cuts Close by 55% With Planful

Established in 1975, Ferraro Foods is on a mission to consistently be the leading distributor of Italian foods, delivering quality products, value, and reliable service. It delivers those delicious products to over 8,000 customers across nearly half the US.

After nearly 50 years, Ferraro Foods’ business had grown considerably in both size and complexity. With multiple subsidiaries and the accompanying array of ERP systems, it became more difficult to gain an accurate and timely view of the company’s financial performance. Excel just couldn’t keep up with the increasing demands for financial visibility, so its FP&A team had to make a change.

“Our CFO wanted to democratize financial data,” recalled Johann Cabe, VP of FP&A at Ferraro Foods. “We wanted to look at a number, double click on it, and see what was driving that number across our business.”
To learn more about Ferraro Foods’ journey to streamline its financial performance management processes and accelerate its time to financial insights, read these two related customer stories:

• Ferraro Foods Streamlines Reconciliations and Close Using Planful and Trintech
• Ferraro Foods Scales FP&A, Cuts Close Cycles By 55% With Planful

Saving Time, Adding Scale With Planful

Ferraro Foods engaged CFO Solutions and selected Planful to streamline its close and consolidation process and scale FP&A along with its business. It then looked upstream and, recognizing account reconciliations as the key to faster, more accurate financial data, added Trintech to eliminate repetition and increase accountability for its reconciliation process.

With CFO Solutions providing guidance, Ferraro Foods was live on Planful in just 90 days. And, the benefits started rolling in quickly:

• For reconciliations, Johann said: “We’re saving a day’s worth of effort every day.”
• The combination of Trintech and Planful helped reduce its close from 10 business days down to just four-and-a-half for a 55% time savings.
• Business units get faster access to the financial performance insights needed to drive success, with Johann stating, “[Subsidiaries] have instant visibility to see how they’re performing.”
• Planful gives FP&A the capabilities, automation, and speed to easily scale, with just a two-person team supporting the entire $1.2 billion organization and nearly 10 subsidiaries.
• With less reliance on slow, and error-prone spreadsheets, Johann says, “(T)he most important thing Planful gives people like me in FP&A: trust in the numbers.”

You can achieve these same levels of FP&A performance, too. Watch this free on-demand demo to see what’s possible with Planful.