Knox Chooses Planful to Automate Planning and Eliminate Manual Work in Under 8 Weeks

Since 1975, Knox Company has developed innovative rapid access solutions for first responders with products like KnoxBox that remove barriers to entry to reduce injuries to responders and minimize property damage. However, years of relying on spreadsheets and manual processes created slow and opaque planning and budgeting cycles that threatened growth. Within weeks of its Planful kickoff meeting, however, Knox was using Planful for forecasting and, a few months later, had its annual budgeting process on Planful as well.

John Dampier, CFO at Knox, spent 25 years in finance leadership and FP&A roles at companies like PepsiCo and Honeywell. When he arrived at Knox in mid-2023, John quickly discovered things were quite different. After a single planning season, he knew the company’s manual, spreadsheet-driven FP&A processes had to be left behind.

“Analysis was sporadic, reporting was lackluster, and the planning process was informal,” recalled John. “It was the ‘wild, wild west’ of annual planning.”

With another quarter-end forecasting session on the horizon, Knox set out to find a new, purpose-built financial performance management solution that would quickly set the foundation for faster, more insightful financial insights built on accurate data and an intuitive platform.

John worked with Planful at a prior company, and although the FP&A team evaluated other solutions, it was clear that Planful was the best choice. Knox engaged Bakerfield Solutions to steer the deployment and got to work, never imagining it would have Planful running in less than two months.

“We had our kickoff meeting on April 4th and were running our June forecasts in Planful by the end of May,” said John.

The team ran the 6+6 forecast in Planful alongside its manual process and quickly moved to 9+3 on Planful alone as Knox prepared for its 2025 budgeting cycle.

“Everything went so quickly with Planful. It was so much easier to get a full P&L and start to run analytics, look at profit, and do it all without merging dozens of Excel files.”

Even when Knox hit a snag with sourcing large volumes of historical NetSuite data, Bakerfield quickly brought in the right experts and resolved the issue. “The volume caught all of us off guard,” said John. “But Bakerfield wasn’t afraid to say, ‘We need someone else on this,’ and two weeks later, it was solved.”

With newfound financial clarity, Knox pushed into late 2024 planning and budgeting season with a more accurate view of what 2025 might bring.

“Sales had its 2025 forecast in October, we rolled up the expenses in Planful, and started our executive leadership meetings in November — ready to make decisions with our P&Ls and expected variances in hand,” John explained. “As we started digging into SG&A, the consistent format from Planful helped us make decisions on the fly. When we left that first meeting, our 2025 plan was essentially done. Planful was a game-changer in allowing that to happen.”

During these meetings, the FP&A team found they could quickly respond to any questions from John or other leaders by running reports in Planful and delivering answers in real time. With the company’s previous manual processes, that same level of analysis would have taken hours, if not days, to get everything aligned.

“That’s just one example of how we’re using Planful to focus more of our time on value-added activities, which, for FP&A, is using data to drive better decisions with the business.”

With planning season behind them, Knox added Planful for Workforce to streamline headcount planning and reduce the time spent wrangling ADP spreadsheets. By centralizing workforce data and aligning it with their forecasts, FP&A eliminated a time-consuming manual process and built a stronger foundation for more strategic forecasting.

Planful AI is the next solution they’re considering. While the team hasn’t adopted it yet, they’re exploring its potential to speed up reporting, automate insights, and reduce the manual burden of data analysis.

“Planful AI is going to take over so much analysis work that FP&A has had to do manually,” added John. “The real fun is thinking of how it will take reporting and analysis to the next level so FP&A can be more strategic. It’s another evolution of our team getting more effective and efficient with data, which will directly lead to more strategic conversations with our leadership team.”

Ultimately, John sees Planful’s value more personally: “I’d absolutely recommend Planful, but it’s less about speed than it is about ease and consistency. It definitely saves us time, but, for me, Planful saves my sanity.”