Cassava Technologies embraces dynamic financial planning

Cassava Technologies, an African technology services provider, operates 100 entities across the continent and transacts in 20 currencies. As the company grew, it became more difficult to model payments within the company and track how well all entities were doing. So, the company used Anaplan to plan and analyze money, budget, and forecast. With Anaplan, budgeting and forecasting are dramatically faster, automated reporting saves time for the finance team every month, and intercompany financial transactions can be scenario-modeled to ensure decision-making excellence.
 

Cassava Technologies is building a digital, connected future that leaves no African behind. The company created the continent’s first fiber network, running from Cape Town to Cairo. Cassava now offers services like network, data center, cloud and cyber security, and fintech through 100 businesses. Ensuring that every operation’s performance is reflected in corporate financials is a top priority of Cassava’s finance team.

“In a fast-moving business, it’s critical that we have accurate and timely information to make big decisions,” explains Frederick Nel, Chief Financial Officer — Cloud & Cyber Security, Cassava Technologies. “And we are a cash-intensive business, so it’s critical that we have our cashflow forecast correct.”

Cassava does business in more than 20 currencies. Manually managing intercompany payments took finance team members away from strategic work because they had to manage currency exchange rates manually. One result: Routine budgets and forecasts took up to four weeks to create.

“Our forecasting model wasn’t driver-based, and was very static,” Nel recalls. For example, his team had to rerun numbers from scratch to understand how changing currency exchange rates and other variables impacted the business.

From static to dynamic

To improve forecasting flexibility and accuracy, Cassava implemented Anaplan for financial planning and analysis (FP&A) and group-wide financial consolidation. “My favorite thing about Anaplan is the flexibility and scalability that it provides,” explains Nel. “When we acquire new companies and expand our markets, we easily integrate these new companies into our actuals reporting, budgeting, and forecasting models.” Bedford Consulting helped with the implementation and provides ongoing guidance.

Nel notes with pride the automation his team has built in Anaplan to accelerate financial processes. “For us, automation is critical,” Nel says. “Anaplan has allowed us to automate our reporting, thereby reducing the time spent on reporting on a monthly basis.” He also notes the integration with Power BI the team created for in-depth analysis and data visualization.

Automation drives fast, accurate financial decisions

With automated finance activities in Anaplan, Cassava Technologies has improved its ability to model intercompany transactions. “Using Anaplan, we now have the ability to run different scenarios of different exchange rates,” Nel says. “This is critical from a fund-raising and investment perspective.”

They’ve also accelerated other key processes. “Previously, our budgeting and forecasting processes took three to four weeks,” Nel recalls, but the process now can be completed in one-fourth the time. “Since introducing Anaplan and automating intercompany transactions, we have accelerated budgeting and forecasting to less than a week, and improved the accuracy.”

Most importantly, static financial planning is a thing of the past. “One of the biggest advantages we have with Anaplan is that we have a driver-based financial planning model,” says Nel. “This enables us to do much better scenario planning.”