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An Abacum implementation partner whose builds go live in weeks.
Constancia is an EPM consultancy and an official Abacum (FP&A software) partner with certified consultants in the UK. We survey your drivers, fix the price and hand the finished model to your team.
Abacum at a glance
- Covers
- FP&A: budgets, forecasts, scenarios and reporting.
- Data in
- More than 700 integrations, with data arriving in near real time.
- Our record
- Certified architects and consultants based in the UK.
An Abacum implementation builds the planning model, connects the ledger and the systems feeding it, and hands the model to the finance team running it. Constancia, an EPM consultancy, does that work for finance teams with a budget round or a funding round in the diary.
- Reads
- The budget workbook as it runs, the drivers in it and who outside finance owns each one.
- Builds
- The model, the actuals feed from the ledger and the scenarios, on the dimensions the actuals already use.
- Then
- A fixed price after the survey, and a handover that ends with your analyst making the next change.
We spend the first week of an Abacum implementation on the drivers, and the configuration follows them.
An Abacum build is short, so the schedule is set by the drivers rather than by the software. Headcount, pipeline and volume each need a named owner outside finance before the model can hold them.
Abacum connects to more than 700 sources, so the connector to your ledger is rarely the piece that decides the schedule. The piece that decides it is the driver that 2 departments define differently.
Where the sales director's pipeline figure and the FP&A manager's pipeline figure differ on the last Friday of the quarter, the model learns both. The survey settles whose figure loads before the build starts.
An Abacum build moves through 5 stages, with the price fixed once the second is done.
The consultants who do the survey do the build, so nobody learns your workbook on your budget.
- 01
Survey the workbook
We sit with the budget workbook as it runs and list every driver, every tab and the person who last changed each one.
- 02
Name the risks
Each driver without an owner and each actual that does not tie to the ledger goes on a list with a name against it.
- 03
Fix the price
The quote follows the survey and carries what the survey found, so a driver dispute in week 3 is already priced.
- 04
Build the model
The consultants who did the survey configure the model, the actuals feed and the scenarios, on the dimensions the ledger already uses.
- 05
Hand over
Your analyst adds the next driver and branches the next scenario while we watch, and the documentation was written as we built.
Abacum suits a finance team under 4 circumstances, and the survey confirms each one.
- 01
A budget workbook that has outgrown its owner
1 person can open the model, 3 people email changes to it, and the version the board saw differs from the version on the drive.
- 02
A consolidation that already works
The group result ties to local books somewhere else, because Abacum plans and the consolidation stays where it already runs.
- 03
A date the forecast has to be ready for
A budget round, a funding round or a board meeting sits in the diary, and the workbook will not make it.
- 04
Owners for the drivers outside finance
Somebody in sales, HR and operations has agreed to stand behind pipeline, headcount and volume when the forecast is challenged.
A group whose problem is intercompany eliminations needs OneStream (EPM software), and we say so before a proposal exists.
6 things leave the budget workbook during an Abacum implementation, and each changes shape on the way.
The left column is what the survey usually finds, and the right column is what the finance team owns at handover.
| In the budget workbook | In Abacum after the build | |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue drivers | A cell somebody types into on the last Friday of the month. | A driver with a named owner in sales, loaded from the CRM. |
| Headcount | A tab per country, each with its own salary assumption. | 1 headcount plan with roles, start dates and approvals in it. |
| Actuals | Pasted from a ledger export 2 weeks after month end. | Loaded from the ledger onto the same dimensions as the plan. |
| Scenarios | A copy of the workbook saved under a new name. | A branch off the base version, with the downstream lines updating themselves. |
| Versions | The board's version, the CFO's version and the one on the shared drive. | 1 model, with each change recorded against the person who made it. |
| Ownership | The analyst who built the workbook, until they leave. | The finance team, with the documentation written during the build. |
Once the model is handed to your team, the connectors and Abacum Intelligence follow.
The connectors keep the actuals arriving and the layer reads them, so both come after the handover rather than before it.
Abacum Intelligence
Forecasting, anomaly flags and scenario branches, switched on after 4 checks of the model.
Read about Abacum IntelligenceAbacum NetSuite integration
Balances by subsidiary, account, period and department, loaded without an export.
Read about the connectorsFP&A consulting
The planning method behind the build, for a group that has not yet chosen a platform.
Read about FP&A consulting
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