Planful Helps Digital Display Manufacturer Planar Confidently Navigate Business Changes Amid New Normal

Planful​ Inc. (formerly Host Analytics), the pioneer of Continuous Planning with its cloud platform for financial planning and analysis (FP&A), announced today that the company has helped its customer Planar successfully navigate complex financials through significant business changes. ​With Planful, Oregon-based digital display manufacturer ​Planar​ found a single source of truth and a Continuous Planning approach that helps the organization confidently manage forecasts and reporting for multiple operating units, while increasing revenue nearly 20% and controlling expenses.

With more than 400 employees and over ten locations across the globe, Planar points to Continuous Planning as the differentiator in helping their FP&A teams move faster, specifically pointing to the speed and efficiency Planful brought to their planning and reporting processes. “Planful’s cloud-based platform has never failed us in our ability to scale the business,” sa​id Brian Culligan, FP&A Manager at ​Planar. “We’ve grown considerably in revenue, structure, and accounting complexity and Planful has easily helped to facilitate our ever-changing needs. A Continuous Planning approach allows us to capture financial results at a consolidated level for all business groups within the organization.”

As the global leader in display and digital signage technology, Planar products can be found in airports, corporate offices, hospitals, ATM machines, retail stores, television sets, and in homes all over the world. Planar has experienced constant organizational growth over the past five years. Providing premier solutions for the world’s most demanding environments and taking on the responsibility of newly added foreign entities, the Planar finance team demonstrated that it had the only consolidated management view amongst the international business group. Culligan notes that Planful’s platform is intuitive, as its global templates allow the team to roll up multiple forecasts in a single view. Each team has access to the same accurate, up-to-date data, which informs planning decision-making and provides easy to use reporting tools.

“We were quickly given the lion’s share of the planning and reporting functions because various companies within our international business group saw we had the right processes, controls, and systems in place to handle new geographies, currencies, and reporting structures,” said Culligan. “With the same number of employees, our finance team is handling forecasts and reporting for up to 12 companies using Planful.”

The Planar team describes Planful as a highly scalable platform that enables a lean, yet agile organization. With limited staff, the finance team produces monthly rolling forecasts that are never far removed from actual results. The company can better navigate market volatility, such as disruptions caused by the recent pandemic, by using modeling tools and comparing the plan to various “what-if” scenarios to predict possible impacts.

“Bringing transformative value to our customers is at the heart of everything we do, and I’m thrilled to see the role Planful has played in Planar’s success,” said Grant Halloran, CEO, Planful. “Our objective as a company is to enable finance teams to empower their organization with streamlined processes and the right financial data at the right time, so better, faster, course-correcting decisions can be made. We are proud to deliver Planar increased agility, and the ongoing ability to do more with less, as their company evolves and scales.”

Planful’s cloud-based ​Continuous Planning​ platform accelerates FP&A processes by seamlessly unifying financial planning, financial close and consolidation, reporting, and visual analytics to help Finance leaders drive faster, and more collaborative, planning and decision-making cycles in all areas of the business.

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Planful is the pioneer of financial performance management cloud software. The Planful platform is used around the globe to streamline business-wide planning, budgeting, consolidations, reporting, and analytics. Planful empowers finance, accounting, and business users to plan confidently, close faster, and report accurately. More than 1,300 customers, including 23andMe, Bose, Boston Red Sox, Five Guys and Zappos, rely on Planful to accelerate cycle times, increase productivity, and improve accuracy. Planful is a private company backed by Vector Capital, a leading global private equity firm. Learn more at www.planful.com.

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