Aboitiz Land constructs a finance platform that adds value across the company

Since its first project in the 1990s, Aboitiz Land has applied innovative technology to the development of residential communities and the home buying experience in the Philippines. For example, the company employs precast concrete panel technology to cut construction time in half, and in 2020 it built and launched a contactless digital homebuying experience in just two weeks. As a result of these and other innovations, the company has enjoyed several years of record sales.

The company’s finance department needed to keep pace with its growth. The team was struggling with inefficient and redundant processes, lack of consistent and reliable data, and manual reporting that took too much time and effort. These challenges contributed to delayed decision-making and missed business opportunities.

Finance department becomes “data stewards”

In 2019, the company chose Anaplan and created a revenue planning application tied to project completion — an important benchmark given that the company can have up to 15 projects going at any given time. In 2021 they expanded the Anaplan footprint with balance sheet and cash flow capabilities.

“The finance team has established Anaplan solution as a single source of truth across Aboitiz Land,” says Dilip Nair, AVP for Customer Success at Anaplan. “This allowed stakeholders to make informed decisions that improved business efficiencies and delivered cost savings.”

With connected plans, finance became the go-to department for data that drives business decision-making. “Every day we try harder to become data stewards, delivering accurate and relevant information to support Aboitiz Land’s growth trajectory,” says Catherine Talita, FPA Associate.

“This project alleviated not only the issues of data quality, but also reduced manpower costs and definitely improved turnaround time for both operational and financial reports,” says Faith Hatamosa, Aboitiz Land’s CFO. One routine project that formerly required 13 people to complete in two weeks is now done by four people in two days with Anaplan. And the three-month annual budgeting and planning process has been shortened to just two weeks – an 83% time savings. “Anaplan is the key and center of this,” Hatamosa says.

 Reliable data leads to confident decisions

Data generated using Anaplan provides actionable information that helps Aboitiz Land run the company better. “We were able to boost performance by providing key operational metrics, available real time to the operations team,” says Christian Jan Beltran, Finance Operations Manager. Those metrics, including data on sales, collections, inventory, and construction costs, are used by decision-makers across the company.

“Every time there is a decision that has to be made involving different groups, they have access to the same reliable, real-time data,” says CEO Dave Rafael. “In the quality of the decisions and the quality of the game plans, we have a very high level of confidence. Anaplan helps make Aboitiz Land even a more innovative and transformed company as part of the Aboitiz techglomerate.”

The team is so proud of their work that they produced a video to showcase their success. In it, FPA Officer Zildjahn Rosalina says the Anaplan solution “is a significant step toward making more effective and efficient ways of working, sharing reliable resources, speaking a common language, and ultimately aligning the efforts toward the common goal of moving the business forward.”