How Bettys & Taylors brewed financial planning success

With Helen Southwell, Finance Director · Bettys & Taylors of Harrogate

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"Pigment allows us to streamline Group-level consolidation, making it the single source of truth for our business."

Helen Southwell

Finance Director

Helen Southwell

Finance Director

Number of employees

1,001-5,000

Used by

Finance team

Headquarters

Harrogate, United Kingdom

Industry

Food & Beverages

Use cases

Financial planning
Budgeting & Reporting
OPEX Planning

Implementation time

Integrations with

At a glance

Bettys & Taylors Group, a 100-year-old family business, is well-known for its Café Tea Rooms and premium tea and coffee brands, including Yorkshire Tea.

Alongside its sister company, Bettys, Taylors of Harrogate operates in both the UK and international markets, serving a diverse group of customers through major supermarkets, discounters, and specialty stores.

As Finance Director, Helen Southwell is responsible for overseeing all aspects of FP&A and business planning across the company.

Graduating from spreadsheets

Before implementing Pigment, Taylors of Harrogate relied heavily on spreadsheets, which were not only time consuming but also lacked the flexibility needed to handle their growing and dynamic business. Their planning processes were performed in a bolt-on EPM tool to their ERP which served more as a repository for information and was not an intuitive or interactive solution. The finance team spent a lot of time manually inputting data there to get a complete P&L, then exporting it into Excel to create charts and compile PowerPoint presentations for the business. Additionally, finance found it challenging to consolidate data from across both Taylors and Bettys businesses, and performing "what if" scenario planning was cumbersome.

“We were heavily reliant on spreadsheets, which were inefficient and not fit for purpose. Our diverse business brings its own challenges to planning, which is one reason we chose Pigment—to get all our planning into one solution and provide a consolidated group view.”
Helen Southwell, Finance Director, Bettys & Taylors of Harrogate

The goal: Blend financial plans across the Group

After encountering Pigment at a conference, Helen and her team began exploring ways to improve their financial planning tools and forecasting software capabilities, and with that, various vendors within the market. They decided to implement Pigment with the goal of consolidating all their planning into one system.

“Our goal was to align our planning processes across Taylors and Bettys to consolidate everything into one system. Pigment allows us to streamline Group-level consolidation, making it the single source of truth for our business.”
Helen Southwell, Finance Director, Bettys & Taylors of Harrogate

Implementing Pigment has also enabled their finance team to address questions from the Group Board, Collaborative CEO and other departments more efficiently while also adapting effectively to changes across the organisation. Helen shares why Pigment was chosen over other providers:

“We chose Pigment because we were really impressed with the tool, with what it was able to do, and we were impressed with the roadmap. What swung it for us was the people we met from Pigment, as we really did feel they were putting the customer first.”
Helen Southwell, Finance Director, Bettys & Taylors of Harrogate

The results

The company adopted Pigment in phases, starting with a few sprints and gradually expanding the solution across the business, and as a result have observed several benefits.

Faster planning processes:

This increase in efficiency has improved team morale, as the finance team now has more time to focus on strategic insights rather than time-consuming, menial tasks.

“With Pigment, we’ve already seen significant improvements. Tasks that used to take days are now completed in minutes. This has boosted morale within the team, as they feel they now have tools that allow them to showcase their capabilities.”
Helen Southwell, Finance Director, Bettys & Taylors of Harrogate

Increased ownership across the business:

‍With Pigment’s intuitive tools, cost centre managers are empowered to forecast their own overheads, leading to more accountability across departments.

Enhanced scenario planning:

‍Pigment has drastically reduced the time it takes to run various financial scenarios, which is crucial in responding quickly to business changes.

“Scenario planning is another critical focus for us. Currently, it takes weeks to produce one set of numbers, and answering “what if” questions is cumbersome. Pigment will enable us to respond to these questions much faster, meeting the increasing demands of the business for better financial and business planning.”
Helen Southwell, Finance Director, Bettys & Taylors of Harrogate

Positive internal adoption:

The team is already brainstorming ways to enhance their use of Pigment, demonstrating the solution’s value to the broader business.

What’s next: Embracing AI

Looking ahead, Helen sees great potential in using Pigment’s AI capabilities to further enhance financial forecasting and decision making. Currently, the company is focused on improving data quality and governance in preparation for future AI integration.

“We’re at the early stages of our AI journey. Right now, our focus is on improving data quality and governance to prepare for AI adoption. The potential is exciting. For instance, using Pigment’s AI capabilities to ask the solution questions and for the solution to return the data, that’s an absolute game changer for us.”
Helen Southwell, Finance Director, Bettys & Taylors of Harrogate

“Enabling people outside of finance onto the solution, asking it their questions, that will save us so much time, so that we can redivert our time into value-adding activities.”
Helen Southwell, Finance Director, Bettys & Taylors of Harrogate

When it comes to sharing learnings, Helen gives her advice to other companies considering Pigment.

“Start with the basics and build out your capabilities over time. Don’t overcomplicate your models from the beginning. Also, invest in training your team so they can take ownership of the tool. Pigment Academy has been a great resource for us.”
Helen Southwell, Finance Director, Bettys & Taylors of Harrogate

Looking ahead, Bettys & Taylors continues to strengthen their financial planning and analysis capabilities with Pigment’s enterprise budgeting software and advanced forecasting software, empowering their finance team to deliver more accurate insights and agile budget forecasting.

For finance leaders seeking to drive transformation and innovation in their own organisations, the latest insights from the Office of the CFO 2025 Report provide essential guidance on evolving the future of budget planning and financial forecasting. Discover how you can elevate your FP&A function by accessing the Office of the CFO 2025 Report today.