Chosen Foods Raised the Financial IQ Across the Organization While Streamlining Planning and Forecasting

Chosen Foods is a progressive and disruptive company, carving out a space in the food and beverage industry, yet its FP&A processes were stuck in the all-too-common bulky, manual workflows, legacy tools, and offline spreadsheets that weighed the team down. 

As a hyper-growth company with global expansion goals, Chosen Foods needed to move away from using offline spreadsheets and shadow systems (i.e. implemented outside of IT’s purview) for budgeting and forecasting. Even more, it needed to show executive leadership how the budget was used and to stay agile enough to react to a changing market. 

When Jim Mancuso, CFO and COO of Chosen Foods, joined the company, he observed that the finance team spent hours to days manually pulling data instead of analyzing it. This meant it took longer for the team to make informed assumptions or ideate actionable goals because “they spent all of their time trying to lift this heavy data.” 

Jim found his team’s time was also eaten up in regular meetings with department leaders who sought transparency in how the finance team functioned, but the reflected analysis took too long, or inputs pulled from multiple data sources resulted in “changing numbers”. 

The finance team lacked a centralized data source, meaning that finance often worked across multiple file versions, resulting in a cumbersome process for running budgets and forecasts for leadership.  

“I wanted the team to be able to understand the noise within the data better,” says Jim. “These problems were similar to what I’d seen at other organizations, and I knew we needed an FP&A solution.”

Fortunately, Jim had successfully worked with Planful in a prior role, which was implemented and used prior to that company’s acquisition by Unilever. 

While Chosen Foods evaluated four FP&A tools, Planful stood out among the competition for “checking all the boxes.”

“It’s not just about the software,” says Jim. “It’s also about the partners you’re working with on the other side. Planful was the solution that outshined everyone else.”  

Chosen Foods needed a financial performance management solution but wanted more than a run-of-the-mill tool. The company sought a partner with extensive technical knowledge and could assist with a fast implementation that wouldn’t sacrifice quality. 

Jim also knew the pain points they felt in finance had a ripple effect on the rest of the organization. With Planful, Jim got buy-in from the entire organization and engaged them in the tool, further boosting cross-functional collaboration. 

In terms of cost, Planful also proved to be budget-friendly for the high level of service provided.

“We know our business really well, along with being experts in finance, planning, and analytics,” says Jim. “It’s so great to work with a software provider like Planful that has that caliber of knowledge as well.”

One of the most critical factors in choosing Planful was ease of implementation. Chosen Foods had complex needs as part of its revenue model, so a hands-on approach from the Planful team was necessary to speed up the implementation time. 

The Planful team delivered, getting Chosen Foods up and running on the Planful platform within eight weeks. 

“As CFO, I can plan for multiple scenarios,” says Jim. “Now, I can see what could happen if we lose an account or have a material cost increase and how it could impact the business. What used to take me days or weeks, we can do in a matter of hours, thanks to Planful.”

Jim’s top tip for implementing Planful? “Don’t wait too long. There’s never a good time to implement new technology, but the sooner you choose Planful, the better you can be.”

The finance team at Chosen Foods had also recently hired analysts who had never worked with planning software before. The implementation process was highly educational for these hires, according to Jim. These analysts are now considered in-house subject matter experts for Planful.

Cross-functionally, adopting Planful has improved collaboration, allowing non-FP&A teams to gain fast answers to their questions and proving the value of the finance team as thought partners.  

“The organization loves that they can come with urgent requests, and we can quickly respond with answers backed by really good data,” says Jim.  

Jim cited a specific example with Chosen Foods’s sales team. Finance gives key users in Sales access to Planful, allowing them to input their data and update their forecasts in real-time. This level of transparency and collaboration saves the finance team time and eliminates surprises in the planning process by improving visibility across the organization.

Planful has now been Chosen Foods’s FP&A solution for a full year, and it has been critical to improve the financial IQ of the entire organization.