The fast food restaurant chain was implementing Vena to improve the efficiency of its General & Administrative budgeting process. Previously, the manual process of distributing, collecting, and consolidating Excel spreadsheets across 90 departments took too much time. Vena allowed the restaurant to automate this process and complete budget planning a week earlier while providing increased visibility, control, and reduced risk of errors. Users found Vena intuitive since it was based on Excel and required only a short training period.

1. SERVING UP MORE EFFICIENT GENERAL
& ADMINISTRATIVE BUDGETING
General & Administrative (G&A) expense budgeting at one of the largest fast food
restaurant chains in the world was inefficient and demanding for its Finance department.
The manual distribution, tracking and consolidation of budget templates from multiple,
disparate entities were proving to be cumbersome, time-consuming tasks.
The restaurant wanted a solution that offered the flexibility and analytic power of
Microsoft Excel®
, in addition to embedded workflow, the ability to collaborate over the
web and increased visibility into their processes. Most importantly, they wanted a solution
that could deliver results with a minimal amount of user training.
Vena met all their criteria. Since implementing the solution, the restaurant’s Finance
team completes their budget planning a week earlier that before in an low-maintenance
environment that everyone understands.
BACKGROUND
Every day, this popular fast food restaurant chain serves hundreds of thousands of
customers. Their annual budgeting process has to account for over a billion dollars spent
across items like employee wages, maintenance, landscaping and operating supplies.
The top-down/bottom-up method of preparing the annual General and Administrative
(G&A) budget required the Finance team to email a series of standalone Excel spreadsheets
to other users for the purpose of planning expenses for 90 departments. The Finance team
then manually uploaded received spreadsheet data into an Oracle Essbase database for
analysis. Although painful, this process eventually gave the Finance team a consolidated
view of the year’s expenses.
Management felt there had to be a better way to plan the costs of food, paper, labor,
utilities and the other expenses necessary to run a large chain of restaurants. As a result,
they set their sights on a new and configurable budgeting system. After outlining a list
of main criteria for the new system, they collectively decided to seek one that could best
leverage their existing Excel infrastructure because they didn’t want to spend months
implementing and training users on a net-new application.
QUICK FACTS
Industry: Food service
Number of Restaurants:
1,400
Employees: 80,000
CHALLENGES
»» Distributing and collecting
templates through email
was time-consuming
and error-prone
»» Manual processes
increased the risk of
error and took time away
from employees’ core
responsibilities
»» Consolidations were
complicated and
time-consuming
APPLICATIONS
»» Online General and
Administrative Budgeting
-- Planning
-- Revisions
-- Reporting
CASE STUDY
““[Vena] gave us the flexibility, functionality
and simplicity that we were looking for.”
– Director of Financial Reporting, Planning and Analysis

2. THE CHALLENGES
Management decided to decommission their legacy Oracle Enterprise Financial Reporting
System and move to a software solution that could be configured to work with their
business. They wanted to speed up their overall budgeting process from start to finish
and improve the productivity of department heads and the Finance team.
The Pressing Need to Improve Productivity
The GA budgeting process exhausted a
considerable amount of employee time. Management
wanted the new process to be one that allowed
managers to focus their time and energy on more
value-added tasks.
As the restaurant’s Director of Financial Reporting,
Planning and Analysis explains, “We were looking for
a new solution that would save about a week at the
back-end. We wanted to give that extra time to our
users so they could really focus on the allocation of
the costs within their departments.”
Inefficient Budget Planning Processes Lead
to Overtime
The Finance group would internally prepare
90 budget templates in Excel for GA expense
planning. These spreadsheets were sent to a group
of 30 managers, many with budgeting responsibilities
for multiple departments. Each manager would
review their plans against the spreadsheet
allocations, enter their financial data into the
template and return the completed version to the
Finance team by email. Once the templates were
returned, the Finance team uploaded them into the
Essbase database for the purposes of consolidation
and report generation.
The process was cumbersome enough to necessitate
many overtime hours. According to one Finance
manager, “The budgets always got done on time,
but it was just a question of how many extra hours…
came into play. A deadline is a deadline and we
always achieve them, but the issue was how much
extra work was required to get to that point.”
“We wanted to be able to keep the same
look and feel as our old process, and get
all the benefits of working online.”
– Director of Financial Reporting, Planning and Analysis
Looking for a New Solution: The Deciding Factors
Management began seeking a solution that offered
simplicity and control. They wanted their users
to make a smooth transition to the new system –
to minimize downtime and training needs – and
concluded that a solution that leveraged Excel
in one way or another would be ideal. However,
management also needed the centralized control
and automated consolidation capabilities found in
most premium Corporate Performance Management
(CPM) systems.
Ease of Use is a Must
“We knew that [the solution we chose] had to have
a simple user interface, a look and feel like Excel,”
the Director of FPA explains. He realized changing
software could have potentially dramatic impacts –
good or bad – on the restaurant’s day-to-day
operations. He firmly believed the new software
solution could not be overly complicated or
necessitate heavy reliance on IT or external
consultants, so as to keep employees
self-sufficient and productive.

3. The Need to Control Online Budget Templates
Management also wanted a collaborative solution
that would allow their users to work over the web.
That way, authorized employees could log in,
access their budgeting templates and submit their
information to a central location in a controlled
and auditable environment.
As one Finance manager explains: “We wanted to
be able to keep the same look and feel as our old
process, and get all the benefits of working online.”
Vena’s Consultants Work with the Finance Team
to Improve Process Efficiency
The restaurant eventually chose Vena to support
their GA Budget Planning process.
Vena’s consultants worked hand-in-hand with
the Finance team to configure the system so that
members could roll out their budgeting templates
with embedded business rules. The Finance team
wanted to make sure that everyone respected their
targets and could be prevented from exceeding them.
Using Vena, the Finance team also designed
processes in such a way that managers can
request that users attach additional costs to their
submissions. These requests are now submitted
and consolidated inside Vena before being
presented to senior management.
Vena’s Consultants Help with Rapid Prototyping
Vena’s consultants used a proven set of
methodologies specifically designed for the CPM
market when implementation time came around.
The consultants delivered a concise, phased approach
that facilitated creative solutions and structured
thinking during system planning and implementation.
Users are Up and Running with Minimal Training
The fact that managers were not giving up the
spreadsheets they knew was one of the factors
that allowed for a smooth implementation. As
another Finance manager notes, “It was a very short
learning curve. We held a lot of one-hour sessions
for all the users across the country. And after that
one-hour training session, people were very capable
of using the system on their own.”
Users Receive Meaningful Vendor Support
It was important to management that the Finance
team receive timely and meaningful support from
their vendor of choice. They were pleased with
the commitment and breadth of knowledge
Vena’s consultants have displayed throughout the
implementation process. As the Director of FPA,
acknowledges, “Any questions that we’ve had… or
when we’ve encountered a little bit of an obstacle,
we’ve just had to reach out to one of the guys at
Vena, and they’ve given us the help that we need.”

4. ABOUT VENA SOLUTIONS
Vena Solutions has redefined how companies automate their most mission-critical finance,
accounting and business processes. Our platform embraces the best of Microsoft®
Excel®
,
extending and evolving its capabilities to create a next-generation enterprise solution that is
powerful, yet intuitive. Vena is a first-to-market solution that offers the most comprehensive
suite of cloud-based corporate performance management (CPM) capabilities with a quick
deployment methodology – all without compromising what you love best about Excel.
www.venasolutions.com
Vena, the Vena logo are trademarks of Vena Solutions registered in various jurisdictions.All other trademarks are the property of their respective holders.
© Vena Solutions Inc.
RESULTS
üü Budget templates are
consolidated more
quickly
üü Enhanced process
control ensure tasks are
completed properly and
according to schedule
üü Reduced risk of error
gives management
confidence in final
numbers
üü The ability to keep
working in Excel meant
a short learning curve
was all that was need
to get users across the
organization up and
running right away
THE RESULTS
Since the restaurant implemented Vena, the Finance team has gained more
control over the budgeting process. They create and consolidate budget
templates faster than ever before and have unprecedented visibility into
all aspects of the process.
High Rate of User Adoption
When it comes to the impressive rate at
which employees across the organization
became comfortable with Vena, the
restaurant’s Director of FPA explains,
“Everybody here is familiar with Excel.
They [didn’t] have to learn anything new.”
Managers also appreciate the fact they
can access Vena functions directly from
the Excel tool bar.
Today, authorized employees create a
spreadsheet, take it offline to work on it,
and when they are done, go back online
and save it. “[Vena] gave us the flexibility,
functionality and simplicity that we were
looking for,” enthuses the Director of FPA.
Taking Vena Beyond Budgeting
The restaurant also uses Vena as a tool
to ease the migration from their Oracle
Reporting system. The Finance department
likes the way Vena can concurrently
integrate data stored in their legacy system
and in Microsoft SQL Reporting Services.
The next step for the company is planning
how they can expand the use of Vena
beyond GA Budgeting processes.
As the Director of FPA explains:
“We’ve only scratched the surface of the
capabilities of the solution, there’s still a
lot more to come. Next, we’re going to
conduct store planning using the Vena
solution. Then, there are many other
opportunities we’re going to see as we
learn more and more about the product.”
Tracking the Status of Workflows in
Real-Time Significantly Reduces Stress
With Vena, the Finance team can now
track the status of the budgeting process
by glancing at one dashboard where they
can instantly determine who has started
contributing to a budget template and
who has yet to open the template.
The ability to efficiently monitor user
activity has allowed the Finance team
to proactively reach out to operations
managers and offer their help when
needed. Now that business rules are
embedded in templates and spreadsheets
– preventing users from making
unauthorized changes – the Finance team
does not spend time or energy worrying
about the accuracy of the templates they
receive.
They’re no longer worried about
spreadsheets potentially containing a
deeply buried error, or the possibility that,
somewhere down the line, an employee
inadvertently changed a formula or
model. Instead, the Finance team finally
has the time to focus on the work that
adds value to their business, including
analysis and reporting for senior
management.