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  • Digging deep comes naturally for The Doe Run Company. But when it came to mining for data, the lead producer hit a wall; managing links and tracking changes across hundreds of spreadsheets stood in the way of dynamic reporting. Doe Run broke through using Workday Adaptive Planning. Creating custom business models and forecasts across its diverse operations put analysis back at the forefront with data-driven confidence.

    Challenges

    • Using spreadsheets to manage file links, maintain formula integrity, generate reports, and track changes became too time-consuming and difficult
    • Controlling cost and managing cash flow in a volatile business environment
    • Enabling decentralized planning and performance management at divisional levels that roll up to a consolidated enterprise view

    Results

    • Automated, accurate, and efficient financial plans, forecasts, and reports have become a central management tool for controlling cost
    • Significant total cost of ownership savings compared to on-premises enterprise software
    • Multi-instance deployment enables decentralized financial planning and analysis across four distinct business divisions, providing a real-time, 360-degree view of business performance
  • About:
    The Doe Run Company is a privately held natural resources company and the largest integrated lead producer in the Western Hemisphere.
    Location:
    St. Louis, MO
    Industry:
    Manufacturing, Energy and utilities

There used to be ambiguity about whether certain activities were adding value – now we’re more confident, and we can quantify the value better.

Dr. Narayana Swamy, FP&A Manager

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Doe Run operates at full speed in the cloud

"Using spreadsheets to manage file links, maintain formula integrity, generate reports, and track changes became too big of a chore for our business," said Dr. Narayana Swamy, financial planning and analysis manager for Doe Run. Starting in 2011, Doe Run implemented Workday Adaptive Planning across four U.S. locations for all of its financial analysis, forecasting and corporate budgeting needs. Doing so improved the company’s ability to:

  • Create multiple versions of financial planning models per location.
  • Automate standard cost calculations for budgeting purposes.
  • Provide a breakout of variance analysis based on production and usage efficiencies.
  • Analyze monthly sales and billing metrics for individual customers.
  • Calculate capital lease liabilities.
  • Manage and control versions of financial models.
  • Perform financial analyses efficiently via drag-and-drop features.
  • Analyze gross profit analysis in more detail.
  • Add more visibility into historical data.

"Detailed planning and forecasting is a central management tool for our business," said Dr. Swamy. "It is the primary mechanism for controlling cost, which is critical for managing cash flow in a volatile business environment. This more disciplined financial management tool produces more reliable budgets, more timely re-forecasts, optimal allocation of resources and improved decision-making overall."

Doe Run’s search leads to the cloud

The on-premise Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and spreadsheet solution the company had previously used to create financial plans and forecasts had become increasingly cumbersome and out of touch with the company’s growth, prompting Dr. Swamy to launch an exploratory project to find an alternative. "We ranked six different solutions based on our needs, including some enterprise on-premise solutions, and we ultimately decided that Workday Adaptive Planning was the right solution for us," said Dr. Swamy.

From a total cost of ownership, Workday Adaptive Planning was a smart decision. "Workday Adaptive Planning offered extraordinary value coming in at essentially 10% of the total cost of on-premise solutions when you factor in hardware, IT, license and support costs. As a cloud solution, it was a big win for us because our IT team didn’t have the resources to be fully engaged in maintaining our financial system," said Dr. Swamy.

One of the many capabilities Doe Run found to be mission critical is the solution’s multi-instance deployment capability. "Workday Adaptive Planning allows division leaders within our company to have their own instances, which is a key for our business and the varied operations in each division," said Dr. Swamy. "It also enables us to easily link those instances together for a consolidated, holistic view."

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