How Veritone Achieved Financial Clarity and Efficiency with Planful

Veritone’s marketing team recognized the urgent need for a reliable system that would provide transparency and accuracy in tracking their marketing spend and enable them to make data-driven decisions. It became evident that the marketing team needed more than what the finance and accounting teams could provide. Thus, their journey to find a suitable solution began.

Their existing budget reporting process involved multiple spreadsheets managed by the finance and accounting teams, resulting in inaccuracies and time-consuming efforts to identify human errors buried in formulas. Jerry Ganguzza, Manager of Corporate Events at Veritone, dedicated countless hours to dissecting these reports, which took time and focus away from allocating marketing funds efficiently. This led to unutilized budgets and a lack of visibility into the ROI of various product line marketing campaigns, including advertisements and various corporate expenses.

Jerry, aware of the complexities involved in managing various promotional ad campaigns for distinct product lines, understood that these efforts demanded different timeframes and funding levels.

During the initial exploration phase, Jerry experienced a live demonstration of Planful’s marketing solution. This showcased its remarkable ability to effortlessly construct campaigns targeting multiple audience segments, including media and entertainment, legal and compliance, and government sectors.

Planful’s ability to allocate expenses accurately, adapt on-the-fly to reassign budget allocations to different line items, and automatically provide insights into cost per lead (CPL) and return on investment (ROI) made Planful a no-brainer.

The user-friendly interface and flexibility of Planful set it apart from other platforms, and Jerry was convinced of its value proposition. Time was of the essence as the marketing team was gearing up for the planning season, and knowing that Planful’s one-week implementation would ensure quick time to value, a rapid implementation process was imperative to meet their pressing needs.

In his role as Manager of Corporate Events, Jerry required granular budget management by event. With Planful, Jerry can now allocate funds judiciously for trade shows and corporate gatherings while streamlining spend compared to previous years.

This proactive approach resulted in substantial cost savings, with Jerry noting, “Our team saved $62K from using Planful because we were able to look at numbers from last year’s event, allocate money appropriately, and remove low-performing or duplicate vendors.”

Additionally, sales benefited from Planful, as it enabled them to substantiate the performance of various campaigns and measure the resulting pipeline generation, fostering a more robust and collaborative environment.

Following the successful implementation of Planful, Veritone:

• Gained the ability to track the allocation of budget to advertising expenditures and the resulting ROI.
• Eliminated any long waiting time for monthly budget, expense, and ROI reports from the finance department
• Was able to access this critical data seamlessly from a centralized location.

The newfound agility provided by Planful was equally transformative. Jerry harnessed the platform’s capabilities to create subcategories for miscellaneous expense allowance (MEA) within Planful, allowing him to consolidate his budget for licensing Veritone ads and evaluate the commitment and closure status of his $1.6 million budget allocation for this segment.

Planful’s intuitive functionality empowered Jerry to collaborate directly with his CMO to define expense breakdowns and swiftly reallocate committed budget resources to other areas, all without relying on approvals from the finance or accounting teams.

Furthermore, the implementation of Planful led to a remarkable improvement in the relationship between the finance and marketing teams. Hours previously spent on manual data entry and reconciliation were eliminated, enhancing overall efficiency. Veritone now regards Planful as their definitive system of record, leveraging its integrations with LinkedIn and Google Ads to streamline operations. Jerry noted, “Planful saved our team 3-4 hours per week by eliminating manual data import and reconciliation through integration alone.”

With these newfound efficiency improvements, Planful has empowered Veritone to make better informed decisions “Collectively we saved 12-16 hours a week using Planful for Marketing from improved efficiency,”Jerry said. This granted Jerry and his. team the ability to close with confidence and optimize their marketing efforts for a brighter future.