Adaptive Insights Brings the Art of Financial Planning and Visualisation to San Francisco Ballet

Simplifies planning and enables profitability analytics by show

Adaptive Insights, the leader in cloud corporate performance management (CPM) for the biggest brands and the fastest-growing companies, today announced that the San Francisco Ballet, America’s oldest professional ballet company, has implemented Adaptive Planning for advanced revenue planning and forecasting analytics. The ballet company required tools that would enable it to gain a holistic view of its finances, reduce planning cycle times, and better understand the financial implications of programming decisions.

“Adaptive Insights software has given us a new way of seeing the numbers so that we can gain insights into how our decisions on the artistic side impact our finances,” said Kim Ondreck Carim, chief financial officer (CFO) of the San Francisco Ballet. “In addition to being able to conduct profitability analysis by show for the first time, we have reduced our planning cycles from over a month to just under one week.  This makes us much more financially agile and allows us to focus on our true passion–bringing the joy of dance to a global community.”

Known for performing the first American productions of Nutcracker and Swan Lake, the San Francisco Ballet today presents over 100 shows annually and is one of the three largest ballet companies in the U.S. Throughout its 83-year lifespan, the non-profit organisation has worked to determine the best way to apply donor dollars through economic ups and downs. It has relied on a complex process of maintaining data in spreadsheets which has lengthened planning time and inhibited the ability to perform forecasting analytics. By using Adaptive Planning, part of the Adaptive Suite, it can now track profit and loss statements by performance–a level of detail that the general ledger simply couldn’t handle. Since each performance’s profitability can vary by as much as $3 million, the ability to analyse profitability by show is critical to the ballet company’s success.

“Non-profit organisations always face the dilemma of how to do more with less,” said Carolee Gearhart, senior vice president, international sales & global channels at Adaptive Insights. “Our software not only ensures that dollars are allocated wisely, but also makes the best use of the financial team’s time. Using Adaptive Insights software, San Francisco Ballet budget managers can easily input data, create reports, and gain data-driven visibility into the company’s finances.”