Sirrom Transforms Planning and Budgeting with NetSuite EPM

Case Study

Hill Labs finds the right formula for faster financial planning with NSPB

At a glance

How Hill Labs connected planning with NetSuite, halved the time spent preparing financial information for Board reports and made rolling forecasts easier to maintain.

‍Hill Labs is a New Zealand analytical testing laboratory, providing testing services across a wide range of sectors from soil and water to food, wine and honey. Behind that breadth sits a highly complex planning environment: six locations, thousands of tests, around 97 business units to budget and approximately 500 permanent full-time equivalent employees, supplemented by a seasonal workforce.
As the organisation grew, the systems that had supported a smaller Hill Labs were no longer keeping pace. Finance was working across disconnected platforms, with uploads, downloads and manual handling required to bring information together. The challenge was not simply to replace an ageing planning tool. It was to build an integrated planning and reporting foundation that could support continued growth without continually adding people and processes.
Analytical laboratory testing
NetSuite + NetSuite Planning & Budgeting (NSPB)
‍ ‍

Around 50% less time spent preparing financial information for Board reports.

Around 50% less budgeting effort for some managers in the first NSPB budget cycle

One connected model supporting approximately 90+ business units and 500 permanent FTE, plus a seasonal workforce

When the planning system becomes part of the problem

Hill Labs had been an early New Zealand adopter of a previous forecasting and budgeting system. Over time, however, support had fallen away, annual costs were increasing and the solution was no longer delivering enough value. Reporting flexibility was limited, new reports were difficult to build and the Board pack still depended heavily on Excel.

At month end, Finance waited until the close was complete before running a two-to-three-hour upload process, including detailed drill-through data. Planning was P&L-only: balance sheet and cash flow forecasting remained outside the system. The annual budget could stretch across two to three months and involve over 20 people, with section managers building budgets from the bottom up across dozens of business units.

“Every year the cost kept going up, but we weren’t getting anything else for it. We were still relying heavily on Excel for the Board reports, and without support we had reached the point where we could only do so much with the system.”
Kirsty Holdaway, Chief Financial Officer, Hill Labs

Regular forecasting was equally difficult. Updating the outlook meant involving the wider business again, and each forecast had to be created separately. There was no rolling forecast and no practical way for Finance to make a small number of driver changes and quickly see the effect across the year.

A connected transformation, delivered in two phases

NetSuite partner, Annexa implemented NetSuite as the first phase of Hill Labs’ finance transformation. Recognising the need for specialist planning and budgeting capability, Annexa recommended Pivot2 to deliver NSPB as Phase 2.

With NetSuite providing the core financial platform, Pivot2 worked with the Hill Labs Finance team to translate its FP&A requirements into a connected planning model designed around the organisation’s real business drivers.

The solution brought together:

Direct integration between NetSuite and NSPB, removing the previous multi-hour month-end upload process.

Rolling forecasts that combine actuals with the forecast for the remainder of the year.

Driver- and trend-based budget starting points, reducing the amount of manual input required from business leaders.

Flexible workforce planning for multiple salary increases, seasonal movements, bonuses, commissions and allowances.

Smart View reporting with fast analysis and drill-down by business unit.

Integrated P&L, balance sheet and cash flow planning, with capital planning being progressively incorporated.

Rather than asking each manager to assemble an entire budget independently, Finance can now prepare more of the underlying assumptions and indirect costs in advance. Conversations with section managers focus on the direct costs and operational drivers they understand best. The result is a more useful business-partnering conversation and less time spent on data entry.

Faster Board reporting. Lighter-touch forecasting.

The most immediate impact has been Board reporting. Integrated data and purpose-built reports give Kirsty faster access to the financial information she needs, while Smart View makes it easy to review 12 months of revenue, analyse results by business unit and drill into how a number is made up.

“I’d say it has halved the time I spend preparing the financial information that goes into the Board reports.”
Kirsty Holdaway, Chief Financial Officer, Hill Labs

Forecasting has also become far more practical. Actuals update each month and flow into the rolling forecast, while Finance can update assumptions through Smart View without opening and changing every individual business unit. That gives Hill Labs a much clearer, faster view of how the rest of the year is tracking.

“Updating a rolling forecast is certainly easier. We can change a few numbers and quickly see a different view of the year. That’s something we simply didn’t have before.”
Kirsty Holdaway, Chief Financial Officer, Hill Labs

More accurate workforce planning

Salaries represent a significant part of Hill Labs’ cost base, making workforce assumptions one of the most important drivers in the plan. The previous model offered limited flexibility around the timing and type of remuneration changes. NSPB now allows Finance to model multiple salary increases across different months, alongside bonuses, commissions and allowances, providing a more realistic view of workforce costs.

For a business with a significant seasonal workforce, that flexibility matters. It improves the accuracy of one of the organisation’s largest cost categories and gives Finance a stronger foundation for both budgeting and ongoing forecasting.

Less input for managers, better conversations with Finance

Hill Labs shortened its first budget cycle in NSPB, despite implementing and learning the new model at the same time. Managers spent less time entering information because Finance prepared more of the model in the background. Kirsty estimates the new approach halved the budgeting effort for some managers, including one who described it as the quickest budget she had completed.

Just as importantly, the process brought Finance closer to the business. Managers could concentrate on the direct costs and assumptions they own, while Finance used trends and drivers to create a more informed starting point.