Insights, tips and trends.

As a finance leader, you need timely information in order to deliver plans that guide decision-making. But when stakeholders are disengaged and unresponsive to your requests for input, you’re left scrambling during your planning process. You may feel undervalued as an administrative afterthought rather than a business partner. 

You know that the finance function has the potential to be the fuel for business success, but it won’t happen without consistent input and mutual understanding with other departments. 

How exactly do you get stakeholders to be more engaged? Let’s explore the challenges and opportunities of getting others involved in strategic financial planning – plus 5 strategies to get moving in that direction. 
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Getting stakeholders involved can be challenging

As partners in the business, you’re all working towards a common goal of business success. So why does the annual planning and forecasting process sometimes feel like herding cats?! 

Lack of engagement can begin when other departments don’t see the relevance of finance to their own plans and success. Interactions may be limited to the handful of times when the finance team asks for quarterly numbers or the plan for the next year. But the infrequent communication and lack of visibility may put finance on the sidelines. 

If this pattern continues, other business units start to view finance as a traffic light to approve or disapprove of their individual plans, instead of as an air traffic controller who can enable and coordinate greater success for everyone through a data-driven planning process. Missed opportunities and blind decision-making become all too common. 

Why is it so important to change this narrative? Because a different approach is possible, and it will transform how the entire business sees your finance function. 
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Why you should make the effort

There’s one benefit of stakeholder engagement that all finance professionals will appreciate: fewer surprises! Frustrating conversations will be left in the past. No more hearing: “Oh, you didn’t know? So sorry, we made that decision two weeks ago. I should have thought to tell you.”

Once stakeholders are more engaged in a more strategic process, other common areas of friction will dissipate: 

• The finance team won’t be spinning their wheels as they chase down other department leads for data and plans.
• Other departments won’t be waiting on finance to complete and deliver the updated reports that they need to check their spending against the annual plan. 

Ultimately, higher stakeholder engagement gives the finance team the freedom to be a driving force for business success. They can support all departments to move in sync towards common goals, pivot when needed, and respond decisively in unpredictable economic times. 

If you’re ready to change the tune of stakeholder engagement with finance, here are five proven strategies you need to try. 

5 Strategies to involve stakeholders in strategic financial planning

1. Rethink communication

It’s time to think of yourself as a business partner to all other departments. Ask yourself, “How can I support and bridge the gap between finance and operations so every other department knows they have my data-backed support?” 

Your frequency of communication may need adjusting. Quy Dong, Stratify’s Director of Customer Success, explains: 

“High-functioning finance teams see their jobs less as generating reports than as helping internal clients solve business problems—they reach out to them regularly, not just at the end of the month or the quarter.”

Make it a goal to gain insight as the finance leader into the ongoing projects, goals, and challenges of different departments. 

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2. Build relationships 

If finance has been siloed for a while, it can really pay off to focus on relationships with stakeholders. It’s a reality of life that people are more likely to help those they know and trust. Take the time to get to know them as people – know how they’re doing and how their weekend was before you launch into your requests for information! Sit in meetings to gain a concrete understanding of their passions & priorities for their department. 

You can even pay attention to how individual stakeholders prefer to communicate. Are they a face-to-face person? You might get input on the plan faster if you jump on a video call. Others might be silent over email but will respond quickly to an instant message. At scale, this may be less efficient. But for a smaller organization, it will be a great investment to build relationships and boost engagement. 

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3. Create your ‘Stakeholder Engagement Plan’

Not all stakeholders will automatically develop a high level of interest in strategic financial planning; that’s to be expected! A ‘Stakeholder Engagement Plan’ (SEP) is one way to plan ahead and adjust your communication and interactions. 

The exercise asks you to consider the annual planning process from the perspective of other stakeholders and ask yourself: “How does an excellent plan built with quality input and completed on time benefit the R&D team? Or sales?” One may be highly invested, while another – not so much!

People will engage with a project when they care, and when they clearly see the value the finance team can bring through actual solutions and assistance to tackle challenges.  Use your insight to give some context to each stakeholder when it’s time to request their involvement and support.

The SEP can also help you assess who might really want to access the plan in real-time, who is less likely to log in and check on their own, or who is eager but lacks the authority to make big decisions. 

Use your SEP to be sure you’re offering the next step that each department leader needs to become more engaged. Enjoy the benefits of higher trust, synergy, and faster response time! 
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4. Provide real-time data  

Consistent access to real-time data reduces friction in the decision-making process. It also reduces how often stakeholders need to come to finance asking for administrative support, like when marketing says, “Hey, can you look up what we spent last month on paid advertising?” This represents a big shift away from finance being the gatekeepers to being interpreters and business partners who empower other stakeholders to find the information they need with a few clicks. 

You can leverage an FP&A tool like Stratify for support to buy back the time you need to be a partner to the business. 

• Automated tools reduce the time that everyone spends waiting to see the annual plan and budget vs. actual reports. Stakeholders can log in themselves to access the latest relevant data and provide input. Security-first controls keep the most sensitive data for intended viewers only.  
• FP&A tools provide a single source of truth and correct an over reliance on error-prone spreadsheets. This boosts your confidence as the finance leader that your numbers are rock solid as you advise stakeholders on changes they can make to see revenue gains or big cost savings. 

5. Share the ‘why’ behind your numbers

Storytelling has been a prominent financial planning trend, but don’t forget these three components to make it more effective:

• Data – use solid facts and figures, filtered to be the most relevant for stakeholders.
• Visuals – choose charts or visualizations that are as clear as possible, so stakeholders spend more time brainstorming solutions than eking out their own conclusions from the dataset.
• Narrative & context – take your deeper understanding of each department and use it to explain practical ways that forecasts or trends will affect them on a daily basis. 

Lead the way and consistently dig into the ‘why’ behind the financial plans and updates you share with the executive team. Use your big-picture grasp of the trends to tee up strategic questions for business partners to consider. Just watch their posture change when they see the strategic value of your input! 
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Stakeholder collaboration FAQ

What’s the key goal of stakeholder engagement? 

The key goal of stakeholder engagement is to minimize surprises and reduce friction between FP&A and other department leaders. This leads to much smoother and more effective planning and decision-making processes. Higher engagement allows the finance team to be a strategic partner, helping the organization to move in sync toward common goals, react quickly to changes, and make informed decisions that benefit the business.

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How do you measure the success of stakeholder engagement?

You can measure the success of stakeholder engagement by tracking both qualitative and quantitative indicators. Quantitative indicators could be improved operational and financial KPIs or a faster time to produce the annual budget. Qualitative indicators could be increased participation in planning processes, improved alignment on goals across departments, feedback quality, and more timely decisions. It’s about observing a shift towards more collaborative, informed, and strategic decision-making within the organization.

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How can I help stakeholders improve their financial literacy? 

To help stakeholders improve their financial literacy, FP&A teams can start by including them in the budget creation process and prioritize transparency with regular updates on each business unit's financial performance. Meet them where they are with tailored financial data analysis and education on key financial concepts during regular meetings. This helps stakeholders gain confidence to manage their budget effectively. Additionally, adopting modern FP&A tools that offer self-service access to financial data can empower stakeholders to make informed decisions and take ownership of their spending.

Learn more: How to Improve Budget Owner Accountability: Guide for FP&A

It all starts with stakeholder engagement 

At Stratify, we talk a lot about the benefits of an integrated and collaborative approach to strategic finance. But without stakeholder engagement, the strategic reality just isn’t possible. 

Fine-tuning your communications and building relationships will help you to engage thoughtfully across horizontal and vertical levels of the organization. Plus, when you have a solid data foundation from an FP&A tool and storytelling skills, stakeholders will know that their involvement helps you to help them.

So, when’s your next executive meeting? It’s time to show them the value that finance can deliver!

Are you tired of spending days on headcount reconciliation? To improve this essential process, FP&A teams, HR leaders, and their business partners must work together to effectively manage all aspects of workforce planning, including a shared, accurate understanding of headcount.

Timely, accurate headcount reconciliation ensures that financial reports and forecasts reflect the best information available.  You are better able to align your workforce plans with financial goals and strategic plans, ultimately driving improved profitability and growth.

By embracing collaboration and implementing finance and HR best practices, you can reclaim your time, reduce errors, and make better decisions. 

Why headcount reconciliation matters

Headcount reconciliation is crucial because people make up the most significant component of operating expenses in many organizations–often up to 70%. An accurate understanding of your workforce–and where you stand versus your hiring plans–is vital for understanding the business’s capacity to achieve its strategic goals. 

Workforce reconciliation connects actual headcount data in your HRIS (Human Resources Information System) with positions in the workforce plan. This process can reveal gaps in hiring plans which may impact company goals. Once completed you will know if you are behind in your hiring plan or ahead of it.

The implications of this analysis impact each function differently. For example, if the Engineering team has yet to hire critical software developers, will it be able to build products at the pace you’ve planned? Maybe Sales is quickly signing up new customers. That’s great news, but if you are behind on hiring for your professional services or other support team, those new customers might not have a great experience and opt to take their business elsewhere.  

Accurate headcount reconciliation allows you to ensure your financial plans reflect the people capacity you actually have and make adjustments to talent acquisition strategy to meet goals. FP&A software tools like Stratify streamline workforce planning, including headcount reconciliation, making it easier for you to focus on the strategic implications of the data.  

The challenges of traditional headcount reconciliation

For many organizations, reconciliation is a time-consuming and manual process. “It is often the worst part of a financial analyst’s job,” says Quy Dong, former finance professional at Workday and the Head of Customer Success at Stratify, “but you can’t do the job without the picture it reveals.”  

Once an analyst understands gaps versus the workforce plan, she can have an intelligent conversation with her business partners about the strategic implications of missing or exceeding hiring plans. “Unfortunately, at many organizations, an analyst spends so much time pulling data and manipulating it in spreadsheets in order to reconcile actuals vs plan, they have no time to have that kind of strategic conversation with business partners,” says Quy. 
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Here are some common challenges faced during traditional reconciliation:

• Definitions: HR and finance may have two different definitions of headcount. For instance, HR may focus on all individuals including part-time, contractors and full-time employees while finance emphasizes budget allocation for full-time equivalents or “FTEs”. This challenge can create confusion and discrepancies when aligning workforce planning with hiring plans.
  
  
• Manual processes: Relying on spreadsheets and data entry leads to errors and inconsistencies. These mistakes can have significant consequences, including financial discrepancies, misalignment between departments, and a lack of trust in the data used for decision-making.
  
  
• Limited collaboration: A financial analyst needs HR’s assistance to map actual headcount to positions in the plan. She also needs input from both HR and business partners to determine the go-forward workforce plan. She may need to have multiple meetings with these stakeholders to come to consensus. When finance, HR, and business teams don't work together effectively, it's a challenge to identify and address discrepancies promptly, leading to prolonged reconciliation processes and incomplete input into forecasts.
  

These challenges underscore the importance of adopting a more efficient and accurate approach to reconciliation.

Best practices for effective headcount reconciliation

To overcome these challenges and enhance the efficiency of your reconciliation process, consider implementing the following best practices.
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1. Create a Shared Definition of “Headcount”

‍A human resources team using HR best practices may define headcount differently than finance. But conflicting numbers will only frustrate your CEO. For workforce planning purposes, there can be only one number.  

Therefore, strong collaboration between finance and HR reporting is essential for accurate and efficient reconciliation. Keep in mind that many recruiting or talent acquisition teams may be very transactionally focused--they’ve got jobs to fill, and they are focused on that!  They are utilizing talent assessment tools and other workforce management software to achieve that goal.

So, start by fostering open communication, and work to agree upon terms. For example, does headcount include contractors? How will part-time workers be accounted for? What about interns? Aligning on definitions will help eliminate the chances that HR will have one number for headcount and Finance another.  In this way, you can ensure that data is consistent and up-to-date, leading to more efficient and effective resource allocation.
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2. Leverage Technology and Automation

Investing in the right technology can help streamline the headcount reconciliation process. It’s the best way to get Finance out of spreadsheets and enable HR to take an active role in the process. 

Today, many financial analysts must download headcount data from an HRIS and manually upload it into a spreadsheet to compare actuals to planned headcount for the period. An analyst must do her best to connect the dots between the two data sets. She typically meets with HR’s talent acquisition team to get the answers she needs to do this accurately. E.g.  Is this Level 1 engineer position that we hired the same as the Level 2 engineer position we planned for? The data is critical, but the process is inefficient, expensive, and a poor use of everyone’s time. 

FP&A software pulls in HRIS data and compares it with the workforce plan in real-time. A simple workflow enables HR partners to walk through the reconciliation process themselves. HR can quickly see actuals vs. planned, match them up, and complete the reconciliation process in just a few minutes. With the time saved, Finance can focus analysis and discussion on the business implications of being behind or ahead of planned headcount. It’s an extremely efficient way to enable the work between strategic finance, HR, and other department heads to be focused on strategy, not data gathering.

“Headcount reconciliation has always been painful. Now with Stratify, Finance seamlessly syncs with HR & Recruiting.”
‍- VP of Finance, Jessica Lewis, Spotnana

Read Spotnana’s Story

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3. Establish Clear Processes and Accountability

Having well-defined workforce planning processes that assign responsibility for defining planned positions and reconciliation tasks can help ensure efficiency. Creating a clear workflow and setting expectations for each team member can prevent bottlenecks, making the process smoother and more effective.

An FP&A platform like Stratify can help track accountability and keep cross-functional processes organized by assigning planning tasks to non-finance roles. All of these action items are tracked and accomplished on the platform with appropriate access controls.  Examples of assignable tasks include:

• Finance assigns headcount reconciliation to an HR partner
• A business partner submits new planned positions and assigns review/approval to finance
• Finance requests that a business partner provide feedback on a new forecast 

Adopting these best practices for effective reconciliation can streamline the process, ensure accurate data for your organization, and foster a more collaborative environment. This positive change ultimately leads to more informed decision-making and a stronger foundation for financial planning.

Compare the top 5 workforce planning tools for finance.

Save time and avoid headaches with workforce planning from Stratify

Leveraging Stratify's innovative workforce planning solution is one way to make the headcount reconciliation process efficient, giving you more time for strategic conversations.  Stratify is the next-generation FP&A platform for strategic collaboration with business partners, including HR. Stratify enables finance teams to engage stakeholders across the organization in the planning process. With Stratify, you can have data and collaboration processes in one place, making it easy to report, analyze, and plan.

Learn more about efficient workforce planning in Stratify.

Welcome to the brave new world of finance, where your role as a financial analyst is not just about crunching numbers. You are now a strategic partner to the business, shaping the future of your organization. Let's explore the financial analyst skills you’ll need to master to expand your career potential as a strategic finance partner.
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Understanding the Role of a Strategic Finance Partner

Strategic finance partners serve as the connective tissue within an organization, fostering a culture of collaboration across departments. They don't just bridge the gap between finance and other units. They align strategies and goals to drive collective progress. 

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Their role transcends traditional number-crunching. As financial maestros, they adeptly navigate complex data, extracting clear, actionable insights that illuminate the path to strategic decision-making.

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These analysts are not mere spectators on the company's journey. They are influential players, leveraging their financial expertise and deep understanding of the business to shape a strategy that's ambitious yet grounded in financial reality. They link financial plans intrinsically with the company's overarching goals. 

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This alignment ensures that every financial decision and forecast contributes directly to achieving the company's objectives, keeping the organization's pulse strong, steady, and focused on its trajectory.
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The Role of Real-time Data in Strategic Decision-Making

At Stratify, we understand the pivotal role that accurate, timely, and accessible data play in strategic decision-making for our customers. This is especially crucial for financial analysts working to provide actionable insights quickly.

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Our FP&A tool furnishes real-time, accurate data from your ERP, HRIS & CRMsystems, and automates the collection of plan inputs and processing reporting tasks. Budget owners are able to directly access reports and contribute to scenarios themselves. This reduces admin burden that financial analysts currently bear and also makes Finance less of a gatekeeper.  This shift allows our users to focus on insightful analysis and strategic conversations, confidently developing informed plans and delivering lasting value to their organizations.
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Financial Analyst Skills to Master 

As the role of financial analysts develops, so does the skill set. To truly excel as a strategic business partner, there are several financial analyst skills to master.
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1. Business Acumen: Understanding the broader business context is crucial. This means being familiar with the company's financials and understanding its operations, industry trends, and competitive landscape. For example, when Quy Dong, former strategic finance partner to Sales and current Head of Customer Success at Stratify,  worked closely with the sales team at a previous organization, she had to understand their challenges and metrics beyond just the financials. By understanding the ripple effects of attrition within the sales team, she was able to proactively pull forward hiring plans and help manage the situation effectively.

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2. Data Analysis: The ability to interpret complex data and extract actionable insights is a fundamental skill for any financial analyst. FP&A tools like Stratify can automate data collection and processing tasks, allowing you to focus on drawing meaningful conclusions from the data and guiding strategic decisions. While you already have a solid foundation in financial analysis, further hone your ability to interpret complex financial data, forecast trends, and understand their impact on business strategy.

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3. Communication: As strategic business partners, we often must present our findings and recommendations to non-financial stakeholders. This requires excellent communication and storytelling skills. We need to convey complex financial information clearly, concisely, and engagingly, which takes practice. For instance, when presenting a budget analysis to the marketing team, lean into KPIs that measure the impact of their spending and their capacity to drive growth, using plain language and visual aids to make the information more digestible. 

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4. Collaboration: Strong collaboration skills are essential as you work closely with various team and organization stakeholders. Building strong relationships, understanding others' challenges and perspectives, and working together towards common goals are all part of this skill set.

Another practical example comes from Quy, “ I physically relocated my desk to sit with the sales team at a prior company. This helped me better understand their daily operations and fostered a stronger relationship between finance and sales.” As a finance business partner, you'll need to foster strong relationships with various departments, becoming a trusted advisor who aligns finance with the broader business goals.

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5. Strategic Thinking: You need to look beyond the numbers and understand what it means for the company's strategic direction. Identifying trends, opportunities, and potential risks is essential. You should align financial plans with the organization's overall strategy. For example, spotting an increase in operational costs may lead to a strategic initiative focused on improving efficiency. Remember, as a finance business partner, you'll be expected to provide solutions, not just identify issues, so always enhance your problem-solving skills.

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Key Strategies for Advancing Your Finance Career

As your company's strategic financial partner, equipped with enhanced skills and a new mindset, below are the strategies needed to continue your professional growth.

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1. Continuous Learning: Stay updated with the latest financial tools, technologies, and best practices. Consider advanced certifications or courses that focus on strategic financial management.
2. Networking: Network with other finance professionals and business partners. This can give you a broader perspective, new ideas, and potential mentors to guide your transition.
3. Leadership: Develop leadership qualities. You must influence others, drive change, and contribute to strategic planning and decision-making.

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The Mind-Shift of the Finance Business Partner

Transitioning from a financial analyst to a finance business partner role involves a mindset shift as well as enhancing skills. Expanding your perspective from 'us vs them' to simply ‘we the company’ embraces the collaborative spirit needed to work together towards shared objectives. 

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Your new role changes your focus from analyzing numbers to transforming data into actionable insights that solve business problems, influence strategy, and drive business performance. And once you develop a deep understanding of the business, its challenges, and opportunities, you can ask the right questions, provide relevant insights, and become a valued voice in the decision-making process. 

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As you transition into a strategic partner, Stratify is here to help. We empower financial professionals to meet the challenge by harnessing data, streamlining processes, and fostering the collaboration you need to influence strategy and drive growth .

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Explore what the Stratify platform can do for you. Talk with an expert today!

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If you’ve mastered the basics of FP&A reporting and planning, it’s time to increase the strategic value of your efforts with operational data. In fact, this is the crux of Stage 2 on the roadmap to finance maturity that we outline in our eBook, “The Finance Leaders’ Guide to Scaling Strategic Finance.”

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First, ask these questions for self-assessment:

• Have you settled into the right cadence for reporting in your unique situation, based on factors like market changes and your industry?
• Does your finance team have a solid understanding of the goals and struggles of other business units? 
• Can our stakeholders access the latest financial reports and budgets themselves, without having to go through the finance team?

Take note of where you answered ‘no’ or ‘...not really’. Those are the next steps and opportunities for your team to grow in strategic finance maturity. 
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What Operational Data Do You Need? 

You are after the non-financial data that has the most impact on revenue and performance. Chances are your stakeholders are already tracking these in the form of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). 
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In a B2B context, key operational data often lies in customer relationship management (CRM) software, like Salesforce, or another database. Relevant operational data is specific to a company’s business model. Example KPIs in the SaaS sector include leads, bookings, deal size and velocity, and customer acquisition cost (CAC). Retail businesses live and die by metrics like average purchase size, inventory turn, sales per location, etc.
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Why Should You Engage With Operational Data? 

When you understand operational goals and KPIs – what drives revenue and makes the organization tick – you’re in a unique position to analyze their impact on the P&L statement. For example, you’ll see how a lagging sales hiring process or fewer marketing leads impact revenue goals. This knowledge improves your forecasts and your ability to advise business leaders on their next steps to adapt or solve these problems. 

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How well do you know your sales plan & sales team’s pain points? A working knowledge of those plans helps you tee up strategic questions during discussions and notice opportunities to mitigate risk together. Divisions can naturally form between departments and lead to miscommunication and missed opportunities, but you can step in with data-informed guidance to the executive team at crucial decision points. 

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“True alignment begins by really caring about the business – and not just the numbers. You have to have a deep understanding of what it takes for an operating manager to achieve his or her goals.” 

Quy Dong, Head of Customer Success at Stratify 

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So how can your FP&A team consistently bring valuable insights to the table? Here are three practical goals you can set to align finance with other business units. 
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Your Top 3 Goals to Understand and Incorporate Operational Data 

1. Shift to collaborative planning alongside other department leaders. Strategic Value = Build trust between business units and show the value of a proactive finance team
2. Understand business operations and key performance drivers (KPIs). Strategic Value =  Forecast more effectively and support business growth
3. Increase your agility with scenarios and modeling. Strategic Value = quickly guide stakeholders toward data-driven decisions
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5 Opportunities to Grow Your Finance-Operations Connection 

These are five key areas where you can practically improve your FP&A function and leverage the operational insights you need for success. 
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Data 

Now is the time to incorporate sales data into your planning. Aim to have your ERP, HRIS, and CRM data integrated directly into an FP&A tool where stakeholders can directly collaborate with you on their plans. Joining this data together into one system saves you time and shows you the impact headcount or revenue assumptions have on your financial plan. You’ll be in a better position to provide insights into operations. 
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Collaboration 

You now have the opportunity to leverage more business data to understand, analyze, and monitor performance drivers. As the finance leader, you’re becoming the glue between different departments to help with decision-making.

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Improve and strengthen the business partnerships you are building by adopting a ‘lean in’ attitude and showing interest in other teams’ work rhythms, goals, and priorities. 

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As a result, your partners in the business will be more likely to share key business intelligence and support your planning efforts. You’ll hear about key hiring decisions or plans to enter a new market before or as they’re happening – not after! 

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Agility
Evaluate your reporting processes to identify the bottlenecks that prevent you from delivering more value. Examples of a bottleneck could be: 

• Data inaccuracies or gaps
• Clunky legacy systems that slow down data aggregation and reporting
• Stakeholders need to go through you to access reports on their spending or other data

When you let an FP&A platform generate reporting packages automatically, your team can focus on higher-value analysis.

A self-service FP&A platform like Stratify enables you to back off of your traditional role as gatekeeper of financial data and let budget holders access the latest reports and analysis themselves.  Access controls ensure they see only the data they need. This improved transparency gives other business units more ownership of budgets and metrics, too.

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Frequency of Reporting and Forecasting 

Be sure that your systems, processes, and communications support you to identify gaps in your plan, communicate across departments, adjust spending, and reallocate quickly to adapt to shifts in the market or your strategy. Agile organizations are moving to a state of continuous forecasting without the delays of gathering and reconciling data. 

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Technology 

Technology is a vital support at this stage of strategic finance. An FP&A tool like Stratify will automatically join your business data from disparate systems (general ledger, HRIS, and CRM), enabling faster and easier analysis. It can also support you with: 

• Increased forecasting sophistication, which helps you identify possible operational changes that could translate to financial gains.
• Faster scenario planning, to present business partners with different options and act decisively in the midst of market uncertainties. 

You’re Not Alone on This Journey

Strategic finance isn’t an overnight destination; it’s a journey that will affect every aspect of your FP&A process. That’s why it’s helpful to think of strategic finance maturity as a continuum, so you can identify your starting point and then narrow your focus on the next right steps for your organization. 

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That’s why we created the Finance Leader’s Guide to Scaling Strategic Finance. 

Incorporating operational data is the focus of ‘Stage 2’ in the guide. It’s part self-assessment and part roadmap that outlines 3 stages of FP&A maturity. Each stage has unique goals for you to aim for, along with inventory questions and tips from finance leaders who’ve been in your shoes before. 

‍Download your FREE copy to gain confidence in becoming more strategic and make FP&A the financial heart of your business.

Today marks an important day in our mission to build the next-generation strategic finance application. 

Stratify is pleased to announce the release of Stratify Workforce Planning, a real-time and collaborative planning and analytics solution for companies to manage current & planned headcount and all workforce-related expenses. Leveraging Stratify’s best-in-class, configurable planning models, Strategic Finance teams can collaborate with Human Resources teams and their business partners to build their workforce plan, and then reconcile it with real-time headcount data from human resource information systems (HRIS) and applicant tracking systems (ATS).

Workforce expenses comprise approximately 70% of a company’s operating costs, and until now the process for planning and managing this spend has been largely offline and disconnected. Strategic Finance teams spend significant time preparing, maintaining and sharing spreadsheets containing highly sensitive employee data, and manually managing a planning workflow that touches every part of an organization.  With workforce changes happening at unprecedented rates, these plans must be frequently updated and painstakingly reconciled to understand current headcount and forecast future spend. 

As experienced finance professionals, we couldn’t find a solution that comprehensively addressed these workforce planning challenges, so we leaned into this uniquely important problem and built it ourselves. We provide a complete and coordinated workforce planning experience for all stakeholders across the business, and save finance professionals countless hours trying to reconcile headcount across disconnected spreadsheets, systems, and teams.
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We invite you to learn more here.

Warm regards, 
Brian + Nate

Brian Camposano, CEO + Founder, Stratify Technologies
Nate Skelton, VP Product, Stratify Technologies