“Enterprise Budget Consolidation Platform for a Top U.S. Automaker”
How COA helped a top U.S. automaker consolidate $10B+ in budget data across 12 regions. Cutting a 2-week process down to 3–4 days.
Client Overview
One of the largest automakers in the United States was operating a critical financial planning process entirely on spreadsheets, fragmented across 12 regional teams with no centralized control, no standardized process, and no single source of truth.
Challenge
Managing over $10 billion in annual budget data across 12 independent regions had become unsustainable. Each team maintained their own spreadsheets, formulas, and workflows, leading to version conflicts, calculation errors, and inconsistent data. Consolidating everything into a single picture took up to two full weeks each budget cycle, with no guarantee of accuracy until a painful manual reconciliation process was complete. Leadership had no real-time visibility, and the risk of costly errors was ever-present.
- Spreadsheet-based process managing $10B+ in financial data
- 12 regional teams with no standardized workflow
- 2-week consolidation cycle with high error risk
- No real-time visibility for leadership or stakeholders
Solutions Provided
COA designed and built a centralized web application that replaced the entire spreadsheet ecosystem. Regional teams across all 12 locations now enter data directly into a single platform, where standardized business rules and financial formulas are applied automatically. Data is syndicated in real time to downstream stakeholders, giving leadership immediate visibility into budgets and actuals with accuracy built in, not bolted on.
- Unified data entry across all 12 regions in a single application
- Automated budget calculations and financial logic. No more manual formulas
- Real-time data syndication to end users and stakeholders
- Standardized workflows replacing 12 inconsistent regional processes
- Enterprise-grade architecture built to handle $10B+ in financial data
Key Results
12
Regions Consolidated
75%
Reduction in Cycle Time
Zero
Manual Reconciliation Errors