True Alliance Brings Clarity to Marketing Spend Across 15 Brands With Planful

From its headquarters in Sydney, New South Wales, True Alliance Business Solutions supports multiple global brands across Australia and New Zealand to expand fast and profitably. As the company scaled, Finance and Marketing labored to track marketing spend effectively, and its spreadsheet-driven processes didn’t help. What did help was Planful for Marketing, giving True Alliance Business Solution partners a common platform for teams to increase visibility and control over crucial marketing spend.

Managing marketing across 15 brands with different strategies and nuances left True Alliance’s finance and marketing teams struggling for visibility and control.

“Life before Planful was an interesting one for us,” said Noel David, Chief Operating Officer at True Alliance. “We were running marketing for fifteen brands on Excel sheets, using manual methods at month-end, with no transparency, no understanding of the numbers, and a lack of control over expenditure.”

At month-end, marketing managers didn’t always know what they had spent, or where. The teams often found themselves overspending, underspending, or investing in areas they hadn’t planned for. Neither side had the visibility they needed to manage budgets confidently.

Finance led the charge on moving to Planful with the intention of creating a transparent data source that marketing could rely on every day, not just at month-end.

“We wanted to drive the same data culture we had for sales and gross margin, but for our marketers,” Noel explained. “Finance was already tracking data and margin daily, while Marketing was stuck working with monthly data full of accruals and prepayments. We needed to bridge that gap.”

When evaluating solutions, Planful stood out for its ability to speak both finance and marketing’s languages.

“We chose Planful because it’s built for marketers,” Noel explained. “It absorbs accounting information but presents it in the language of a marketer, by campaigns and segments. We can easily convert that into the data Finance needs, helping Marketing understand the financial side of their decisions.”

With support from the Planful team, True Alliance integrated 15 international brands into a single platform. The core financial data remained consistent, while each brand’s front end reflected its unique marketing structure.

“The Planful team really supported us through the transition,” Noel said. “We were able to integrate our ERP directly into Planful, giving marketers daily views of their data. Each brand only has access to what they should be seeing, so there’s security and flexibility for those managing multiple brands.”

Planful for Marketing gives True Alliance deep visibility and tight control over marketing spend. Now, Finance and Marketing are empowered with a culture of self-service.

The result? A self-service model where Marketing can access and understand their spend data in real time without constant monitoring from Finance.

“We’ve removed the need for Finance to be involved daily,” Noel said. “Now the conversations we’re having are strategic, not about data. Planful helped us build a culture of self-service, where marketers can find answers and come to us with informed questions.”

That shift has also freed Finance to focus on higher-value work. The team no longer dedicates a full-time role to managing marketing spend—capacity that’s now redirected to more strategic initiatives.

For Noel, that time savings is one of Planful’s biggest wins. “Month-end is already tight,” he explained. “Planful eliminated that task completely. The forecasting process is automated, and marketers are reviewing their data daily—just like our sales teams do.”

Managing 15 distinct brands also became far simpler. “Serving multiple brands, the effort of replication was huge,” Noel said. “Planful has given us scalability to manage multiple users, brands, and entities within one system.” That scalability, combined with role-based access, ensures each brand team has the visibility they need without losing control or security.

Finance now benefits from a single, trusted source of data that feeds directly into FP&A forecasts. “Today, we’ve got transparency for the business,” Noel added. “We’ve got robust controls within the system, and it’s created a central data source for Finance and Marketing instead of the siloed spreadsheets we had before.”

Together, these changes have transformed how both teams work:

• Time savings and efficiency: Manual reporting across 15 brands was eliminated, allowing Finance to focus on strategy, not spreadsheets.
• Scalability and control: Marketing and Finance now operate from one platform with secure, brand-specific views.
• Transparency and accuracy: Shared data ensures alignment, giving teams confidence in every decision.
• A cultural shift toward accountability: Marketers now check performance daily and adjust proactively, mirroring how sales teams use real-time insights.

Noel summarized the impact:

“For a marketer at True Alliance, they’re able to log in, see what the past was, and get on with the job. From a Finance perspective, we’ve derisked ourselves from overspends and given everyone transparency of data.”