Lifting Forecast Accuracy and Decision Speed
SaaS | Mid-sized UK Enterprises
The Challenge
Prior to Board North, the finance function struggled with:
- Fragmented data and manual reconciliations.
- Inconsistent definitions for ARR, churn, and revenue recognition.
- Reporting lags and version conflicts undermining confidence.
- Board packs focused on history instead of forward insight.
- Meetings spent on data debate instead of decisions.
The Solution
- Conducting a governance & finance diagnostic across order-to-cash and record-to-report.
- Defining a finance data model aligned to COSO controls and standard SaaS metrics.
- Implementing AI-assisted variance analysis and automated reconciliations.
- Replacing static plans with a rolling 13-week cash and 12-month revenue forecast.
- Simplifying KPI stack to lead indicators (pipeline quality, NRR, product margin).
- Coaching finance leaders and committee chairs on meeting discipline and decision clarity.
The Results
- +35% forecast accuracy within nine months.
- -40% planning cycle time (one-day executive reviews).
- -80% board-pack prep time (two days → four hours).
- Decision latency -3 weeks, improving speed to investment.
- +10 days cash conversion improvement via cleaner billing and collections.
- 70% automated variance explanations, freeing analysts for scenario work.