Kimball Midwest cuts reporting time by 85% and turns FP&A into a strategic partner with Planful AI

Kimball Midwest is a family-owned and operated MRO distributor based in Columbus, Ohio. For more than a century, the company has supplied maintenance, repair, and operations products to customers across industries, growing from less than $1 million in revenue in 1983 to more than $550 million today.

That growth changed the math for FP&A. With new complexity across territories, departments, distribution centers, and headcount planning, the team needed a planning environment built for the scale of the business, and an AI layer on top that could give a lean team back time to partner with leaders across the organization.

“Planful has really allowed us to get into this strategic business partnering role,” says Kevin Washek, Director of FP&A at Kimball Midwest. “Whereas in the past with Excel, we were more geared to the reactionary type of business partnering.”

With Planful in place, Kimball Midwest has:

• Shifted FP&A capacity from transactional work to strategic business partnering across HR, sales, and operations.
• Adopted Planful AI Analyst Assistant for daily review prep, quick questions, and variance analysis at the macro level.
• Extended into Planful AI Planner Assistant for scenario modeling, what-if analysis, and forecasting inside templates.
• Enabled non-finance business partners to pre-populate fixed and variable GLs using Planful AI forecasting.
• Reduced budget reporting from about seven days of preparation to just one.
• Replaced 40+ disconnected spreadsheets with one unified planning environment.
• Strengthened collaboration with HR through improved workforce visibility.
• Completed implementation in roughly seven weeks, in time for the annual budget cycle.

Kimball Midwest operates across a network of territories, departments, and a distributed workforce, all of which need to come together in a single, accurate view of the business.

“It took more than forty different Excel sheets that you had to connect together to get an overall company view,” Kevin says.

For a lean FP&A team, that structure made it difficult to quickly consolidate data and deliver a clear, timely view of performance. Time was spent preparing and validating information, limiting how quickly the team could support the business with insight.

That same friction showed up in leadership reporting. The 80- to 90-page budget deck took almost a week just to compile from data, before the team could even start analyzing it. And business partners across HR, sales, and operations leaned on FP&A for answers the team didn’t have time to dig into deeply.

“We were more geared to the reactionary,” Kevin says. With the next budget cycle approaching, the team had a narrow window to implement a new platform and rebuild how FP&A showed up for the business, with AI as part of that rebuild from the start.

Kimball Midwest needed a platform that could bring planning, reporting, and workforce data into one place while supporting the scale and structure of a national distributor.

Planful provided a unified environment where finance, HR, and business leaders could work from the same data. That shared access made it easier to reduce manual effort and support more consistent planning across the organization.

The team also evaluated where AI was heading on the platform and saw that Planful was developing AI capabilities that specifically met their needs.

The ability to implement quickly and be ready for the budget cycle was also critical. The team completed implementation in about seven weeks, working closely with the Planful team to build reports, validate data, and train business users.

“Having the Planful implementation team with us was great,” says Abby Brown, Senior Financial Analyst at Kimball Midwest. “When we had a question, we could just go right over and ask.”

• Unified planning and version control. Kimball consolidates data across territories, departments, and headcount into a single structure, eliminating the need to connect dozens of spreadsheets and ensuring everyone works from the same information.
• Instant, refreshable reporting for all levels of the business. Using Planful Spotlight for Microsoft 365, Kimball delivers consistent, pre-formatted reports across the business, including leadership. Once data is loaded, reports are immediately available, allowing teams to move straight into review and discussion. “Spotlight is incredibly dynamic,” says Jillian Channell, Senior Financial Analyst at Kimball Midwest. “We just hit refresh, and that deck just automatically updates.”
• Faster budget cycles and iterations. Budgeting no longer requires rebuilding files or reconciling versions. “After Planful, our budgeting process is like a dream come true,” Abby says. “It sounds kind of corny, but no time at all.” The team can quickly update assumptions, iterate, and move forward without starting from scratch.
• Workforce visibility and collaboration. Planful for Workforce gives HR and FP&A shared access to headcount data, including open roles, backfills, and future planning needs.
• Embedded collaboration and context. Teams use comments to track variance explanations and collaborate directly in reports. Jillian notes that comments are retained, making it easier to reference past decisions and maintain continuity across reporting cycles.

Planful AI in action at Kimball Midwest

The Kimball team uses Planful AI across the finance function, with each capability contributing in a different moment:

• Daily reviews, with Planful AI Analyst Assistant. Kevin uses Analyst Assistant at the start of review processes to identify where to dig in. “Instead of opening reports, kind of digging into the departments to say this is where the expense drivers are coming from, or this territory is driving sales, we simply ask the analyst, and it’s able to direct our eyes and give us initial context,” he says.
• Quick answers in the moment. Jillian and Abby use Analyst Assistant for fast, hierarchy-aware queries. “Planful’s AI analyst assistant is really quick,” Jillian says. “It knows our hierarchy exactly and is able to produce answers really fast.” Abby uses it to answer business questions on the spot. “If somebody were to stop by and say, ‘Hey, what was our headcount for this month?’ That’s not something I would usually remember. I just ask the assistant.”
• AI forecasting for non-finance budget owners. Kimball’s non-finance business partners now use Planful AI forecasting to pre-populate fixed and variable GLs in their budget templates, so the budget conversation starts from an AI-informed baseline rather than a blank cell.
• Scenario modeling and what-if analysis, with Planner Assistant. The team is extending its AI usage to Planner Assistant. “I’m really excited about the Planner Assistant,” Kevin says. “The new functionality is going to give our team and FP&A teams the ability to do scenario analysis, what-if analysis, help us with forecasting, and more in-depth.”

Planful has changed how FP&A operates at Kimball Midwest by shifting the team’s focus from preparing data to working directly with the business.

Budgeting and reporting are more efficient, but the bigger impact is how quickly information can be accessed and used. Jillian sees that change firsthand.

“We’re able to go in with a conversation-ready report with our business partner,” Jillian explains, describing how finance now works side by side with teams to review performance and discuss next steps.

That shift has created more capacity for forward-looking work. With Planful AI Analyst Assistant prepping the team for reviews and AI forecasting, helping business partners self-serve, the team can spend more time on the conversations that matter. “Everything’s housed. It’s instantaneous,” Kevin says. “That capacity and that time now has shifted into more meaningful strategic conversations across the business.”

FP&A now plays a more active role in supporting decisions across HR, sales, and operations, helping teams understand drivers and act more quickly.

For a company built on a long-standing partnership with its customers and associates, this shift extends that same approach internally, connecting teams through shared data, putting AI to work in the daily review, and freeing finance to help guide the business forward. And with Planner Assistant coming next, the team expects the same shift to extend from analysis into scenario modeling, what-if planning, and dynamic forecasting.