Replaced cumbersome budgeting and planning system with Excel-native solution that feels second-nature
FP&A team gained full transparency and drill-down visibility into transactions
Intelligent analytics helps identify trends and anomalies faster to drive forward planning
The Challenge: Improving User Adoption and Empowering Advanced Analytics
When Bruce Harris joined Torchy’s Tacos in March of 2021—a fast food restaurant chain with nearly 130 locations across the United States—their FP&A team already had a budgeting and planning solution in place. The problem, however, was that it was getting minimal use. The team was turning to Microsoft Excel instead to undertake financial modeling and other critical tasks.
“It was the same struggle I've seen at multiple companies. ‘We’ve got a tool that's complex, that's technical. I really don't want to learn how to use it,’” remembers Bruce, Director of Financial Applications at Torchy’s. “‘And if this is what we have to use, I'll just slam my data in there, but I'm not going to really model it. I'm going to model outside of it because it's not flexible enough.’”
Not only did that add inefficiencies, but it also made it difficult to effectively track key metrics around sales, transactions and labor. The business was also missing out on the forward-thinking insights that come with intelligent analytics and in-depth analysis. To gain those insights, Torchy’s needed a budgeting and planning solution that users would actually embrace—without a steep learning curve or the need for extensive IT support.
So, Bruce did what he’d done before. He turned to Vena. “This is my third time selecting and implementing Vena,” Bruce says. “I've also done it at a couple of other companies. Then I brought it into Torchy's too, because it was such a good experience.”
Unlocking Intuitive and Intelligent Analysis With Vena
Rather than forcing users to swim against the stream with a budgeting and planning solution that’s too difficult to use, Vena’s native Microsoft interface lets Torchy's FP&A team work in an Excel landscape while also taking advantage of advanced functionality such as financial modeling, for future-facing insights.
“For FP&A, you want a tool that they know how to use and just works. If they're given a tool that’s complex—that they're going to spend a lot of time learning, or isn't flexible enough—they're going to really use that at a minimum and they're going to use Excel instead because that's what they know,” Bruce says.
“When I introduced Vena to my teams, literally their eyes lit up because they thought ‘wow, I did not know there was actually an Excel-native tool that did this.’ And so they're happier, things are more efficient, and they just happen a lot better and a lot faster.”
Today, with Vena in place, Torchy’s FP&A team is sourcing data from across their point of sale (POS) system, NetSuite, and more. They’re able to attach related documents to their workflows, ensure the proper risk controls are in place and drill down to the individual location or invoice level to get to the heart of new trends or data anomalies. And all this without having to navigate complicated accounting software or move anything into offline Excel.
As well as being more efficient and more secure than sharing individual Excel documents, this also ensures Torchy’s high-level data is no longer contained in “a black box.” Rather, full transparency is available, letting the team better explore where exactly their numbers came from—to fully track the metrics that matter.
“They have their expenses and their labor, and then they're able to see that and drill down so they can click on a GL account, a certain type of expense account, and then that drill down cascades out all the detailed transactions,” Bruce explains. “That gives them literally a line-by-line of every single invoice.”
One of the great things about Vena is the audit trail. If somebody changes something 10 times you can see it. You have all of that in the audit trail.”
Bruce Harris
Director of Financial Applications, Torchy’s Tacos