John Hadley joined Crown Partners as CFO almost three years ago, after years of leading finance at companies like GE and NCR. Crown Partners is a fast-paced, full-service eBusiness firm that drives demand, conversion, retention, and client advocacy. In the last year, the company has tripled headcount (from 100 to 300), and revenues have increased by more than 100%.

In this AppExchange success story, Hadley discusses why and how Crown Partners transitioned from a legacy ERP system to a suite of FinancialForce ERP apps. The motivation, outcomes, and peer tips Hadley shares offer great insight for fellow CFOs who are still struggling with isolated systems and slow, error-ridden financial management. 

Unify sales, operations, and finance data for agility and speed

Hadley was ready to give up on the legacy ERP system. Fortunately (or unfortunately), the operations team was also feeling the pain. The team came to Hadley to suggest a transition. They asked him and other business unit leaders to take a look at FinancialForce apps, along with a couple other possibilities. They wanted to unify data across the business, but specifically to manage project operations.

The fact that FinancialForce.com had apps for accounting and project management built on the Salesforce1 platform, a familiar interface, and easy integration with their existing Salesforce CRM data “made it a no-brainer,” according to Hadley. And the owners and leadership team agreed: “they really liked the link to Salesforce,” Hadley says. 

Peer Tip:

“Systems decisions should be collaborative, and sales/operations functionality should come first. If you integrate finance with sales and operations data, your visibility into the top line and ability to make financial decisions based on what’s currently happening in the market will be much more valuable than one-dimensional balance sheets and P&L.” 

Escape constant, expensive updates by moving to the cloud

The legacy system Hadley inherited had quarterly updates that required constant reconfiguring to keep up with the changes. For a small company, the costs associated with regular adjustments were crippling. He was also spending a ton of time manually readjusting and refocusing his resources on the balance sheet to facilitate growth. He needed to break the cycle on both fronts in order to scale efficiently.

Peer Tip:

“If you’re already a Salesforce customer and need new software, don’t try to reinvent the wheel—go for an integrated app first. Someone already did it, and they probably did it better than you could, so use those apps to bolt on as much as possible.”  

Deliver dynamic management insight

After implementing FinancialForce.com, the Crown Partners team was able to close the books in a mere three days, versus the three-week process that was the norm.

But dynamic, day-to-day visibility is what really got the team excited. Shortly after implementation, Hadley gave each of the functional finance team leads a challenge. He said, “I want you to create a dashboard. And just call it ‘dashboard for dummies,’ because I want this dashboard to be something that anyone in the business can pull up and know exactly what you know about your area."

The dashboards and dynamic reports movement had a huge impact on the day-to-day lives of his team. "They rely less on error-ridden spreadsheets," Hadley explains. "They’re able to answer questions much faster, and help the business owners dig deeper into dynamic reports when necessary."

Peer Tip:

“The people are the process. If you give your finance team the systems that make it easy to answer simple and complex questions with ease and speed, and help the user help themselves, your team will be more effective and a lot more satisfied.”

Want to learn more? Check out FinancialForce ERP apps on AppExchange, read another CFO success story about FinancialForce ERP, and download our free e-book below.