How Fivetran saves 12 hours every month on executive reporting alone

Fivetran is the industry leader in data movement. It provides automated data connectors to support real-time analytics, database replication, AI workflows, and cloud migrations for thousands of customers worldwide.

At a glance

• Before Pigment, Fivetran relied on Google Sheets. The ‘3D’ dimensionality of Pigment saves analysts around 12 hours every month on reporting tasks alone.
• Pigment automates many of the previously manual, tedious processes that were preventing Robbie’s team from doing more strategic (and rewarding) work.
• The finance team has been able to let execs and business partners self-serve the data they need, without risk of exposing inaccurate data.
• AI capabilities are already driving efficiency and Fivetran is expecting even larger gains in the near future.

Like many of our customers, Fivetran’s finance team were previously making extensive use of Google Sheets.

Business data was fragmented, and reconciling the different spreadsheets was difficult. As a result, answering questions from executives took far too long and there was limited confidence in forecasts.

Differences between departmental planning - for example, marketing vs engineering - created aggregation issues and forced time-consuming manual data ‘plugs’.

Adding an extra dimension to planning

Fivetran took the decision to implement Pigment, and now uses it for workforce planning, 3-statement modeling, and long-range strategic forecasting.

Following implementation, a team of 12 financial analysts have full access to Fivetran’s Pigment instance, with executives and business partners having role-specific application access.

The difference has been immediate.

But it’s not just reporting where time is being saved.

Following a recent acquisition, Robbie’s team was tasked with bringing in 50 new headcount. Automated calculations saved an enormous amount of time:

Giving executives a look behind the curtain

Getting executives closer to the raw data can be daunting. But the payoff is significant.

But with Pigment’s fine-tuned access rights functionality, Robbie’s team is able to let executives see exactly what they need to - and nothing they don’t. The executives love it.

The advantages are significant - when execs are able to self-serve more often, that frees up analysts to focus on more important, strategic work.

What’s more, the execs  themselves really appreciate the ability to pivot company reports and drill down on specifics themselves.

It might feel a little daunting to allow executives into a platform like Pigment - particularly when accounting is still closing the books, for example. But Robbie has a solution.

The finance team is able to do all this without exposing ‘unfinalized’ data. For their executive dashboards, they hide the current ‘working’ forecast - ensuring no mistakes or difficult questions.

Basically, the execs only ever see ‘final’ numbers.

Getting granular on capacity planning

The team is now able to delve deeper into their data. Robbie described work he’s been doing on KPIs for capacity planning in Pigment, which has allowed for much deeper insight.

Saving time every day with AI

Robbie is really excited about Pigment’s AI capabilities.

He regularly uses them to quickly get insights on month over month variances, or quickly track down pieces of information, but he’s looking to do even more.

Next steps

To view the webinar with Robbie on-demand, click here.

Or if you’re ready to see how Pigment could help you specifically, book a demo today.