Igloo Replaced Spreadsheets With Collaborative, Finance-Owned Planning in Planful

For over 75 years, Igloo Products has created the world’s most recognizable coolers, drinkware, and outdoor lifestyle gear. Headquartered in Katy, Texas, Igloo’s team designs, manufactures, and distributes products that fuel everyday adventures.

But as Igloos’ operations scaled, so did the complexity of its financial planning processes. Budgeting and forecasting across hundreds of cost centers using spreadsheets and legacy tools led to inefficiencies, data inconsistencies, and growing IT dependence.

With Planful, Igloo automated workflows, centralized financial data, and equipped 40+ users to collaborate in real time, gaining faster, controlled, and more connected planning.

As the iconic cooler manufacturer grew, so did the complexity of its FP&A processes. Managing budgeting and forecasting for hundreds of cost centers across disconnected spreadsheets left the Finance team drowning in manual work.

Igloo initially relied on Excel, but eventually tried to modernize with OneStream. However, the system couldn’t support their budgeting needs, lacked user flexibility, and created a heavy reliance on IT for even the simplest tasks. Instead of simplifying planning, OneStream created more roadblocks—slowing down reporting, reducing visibility, and limiting Finance’s ability to operate independently.

Anitha Ramaraj, Manager of FP&A, and her team found themselves stuck stitching together plans manually, working across endless spreadsheets just to keep budgets moving. They needed a platform that was intuitive, easy to use, and, most importantly, owned by Finance.

“Life before Planful meant we were budgeting through Excel sheets with hundreds of cost centers,” Anitha explained. “OneStream was like a black box. We couldn’t do a lot of reporting out of it, and we had a heavy dependency on IT to be able to execute even simple reports needed in finance.”

The limitations led to widespread pain points across the business:

• Siloed data with no single source of truth
• Heavy IT dependence for even the simplest reports
• Tedious, error-prone data gathering and manipulation
• Time-consuming budget cycles and poor user engagement and adoption

The situation quickly became unsustainable. To scale with confidence, Igloo needed a platform that gave Finance control, re-engaged business users, and eliminated the black box once and for all.

In June 2023, Igloo’s FP&A team turned to Planful to modernize its budgeting and forecasting processes. The platform’s familiar, intuitive interface gave Excel-heavy users immediate confidence, while automation and secure data access helped reduce busywork and tighten control.

Igloo first implemented Planful to support consolidations, then quickly expanded to workforce planning, and customer product profitability modeling. Today, Planful supports collaboration across Finance, HR, and business operations.

“Planful has been like a single source of truth,” Anitha shared. “It automated the whole budget process for us and reduced the time to build the budget. We have more buy-in from users, and the users feel more engaged with the platform.”

That shift gave users more visibility into their numbers and Finance more confidence in the inputs; no more second-guessing where a number came from. Individual users have the power to drill into their numbers and build reports without IT’s help. And thanks to Planful’s robust approval workflows, Igloo has stronger financial control, letting department heads submit plans that route automatically to finance for review.

“The implementation team was really great,” Anitha said. “They’re very knowledgeable and worked with us to brainstorm requirements and offer solutions that work for us.”

Planful’s corporate performance management software delivered measurable improvements for Igloo, transforming budgeting from a fragmented, spreadsheet-heavy burden into a streamlined, collaborative process.

By eliminating manual consolidations across hundreds of spreadsheets with Planful’s consolidations solution, the finance team dramatically reduced its budget cycle time and gained a centralized planning environment with secure, built-in governance.

More than 40 users, including 25 from outside the finance department, now actively collaborate within Planful, enabling scenario planning, what-if analysis, and immediate access to budget insights.

“Functional users are fully engaged month over month,” said Anitha. “There’s no more: ‘Is the data right?’ It’s, ‘This is my data. I own it. I entered it. I budgeted for it.’”‘

With Planful for Workforce, Igloo has also strengthened collaboration between finance and HR, providing greater alignment during workforce planning and hiring. HR now contributes directly to live workforce scenarios, helping ensure open roles and headcount plans stay in sync with budget targets.

“It’s brought planning closer between Finance and HR,” Anitha explained. “That didn’t exist before. Now HR knows exactly what’s budgeted for when they’re hiring.”

Igloo has further expanded its use of Planful by integrating the Microsoft Power BI connector, making it easier to share planning data across the business. While the team already had real-time access to key budget insights in Planful, the connector automates the delivery to Igloo’s corporate BI environment, enabling broader visibility for stakeholders beyond Finance.

By combining Planful data with insights from other systems in Power BI, Igloo is creating a more connected and accessible reporting ecosystem, replacing manual data preparation and enabling the business to work from a shared, up-to-date view.

“Planful gives us peace of mind,” said Anitha. “It truly is a collaboration between functional users and finance, making finance a team sport. Before Planful, we had hundreds of spreadsheets. Now we have more time to develop more meaningful reporting. It has turned our team from being reactive to proactive.”