The age-old question: budget versus actual spend

"How am I tracking?" That was the biggest question every quarter for Jarrod Krug, Marketing Communications Manager of Building Construction at Trimble. Each quarter, his team diligently outlined the division's marketing communications budget on a massive Excel spreadsheet, but he never knew if they were on track until the end of each quarter. "We were in the dark. There were times when we were thousands of dollars off. There was no real-time transparency, so it was just a nightmare to manage from that perspective." Using a spreadsheet was also a time-consuming and frustrating process for Krug's team. "It had to be sent over in email, and had to be updated all the time, and it was just clunky – it didn't work."

Good-bye to the 'clunky' spreadsheet

Krug knew there had to be a better way, so he searched for an alternative, and found Allocadia. "I was assuming there had to be something out there that filled this niche, and we found it, luckily." His team adopted Allocadia's marketing budgeting software, and quickly noticed impressive results. They clearly saw areas of duplicate spending that previously went unnoticed on the huge spreadsheet; their quarterly spend has stayed within 2-3% of budget since implementing the software; and the quarter-end budget reconciliation, which used to take up to seven days, is essentially eliminated.

Growing with Trimble's acquisitions

Jarrod Krug says Allocadia's marketing budgeting software has many valuable features, and its functionality is especially helpful during mergers and acquisitions. Like many companies these days, organizational change keeps Krug's marketing communications team in flux. "We've acquired many companies over the years." Krug says Allocadia can help make the marketing integration process a lot smoother. "The good thing about Allocadia is that it is one centralized repository for the budgeting process, and it allows ultimate transparency across all the different customer types, and through acquisitions all the different brands."

For that reason, Krug plans to broaden Allocadia's use across his expanding marketing communications department. "Overseas, we've acquired an organization that has a massive global presence, and we're rapidly trying to introduce them to Allocadia."

How is Trimble tracking now?

With Allocadia, Krug knows the status of his marketing communications budget at any given moment. "I'm able to, at any hour of the day, find out exactly how I'm tracking. There's no myth about, 'Are we close?' Now, we know exactly where we stand. I can see on a quarterly basis, on a yearly basis, I can see monthly, I can interrogate the data and find out where there are deltas from what we planned vs. what we actually spent. We don't miss the biggies anymore." As a result, Krug says there's no turning back, and Allocadia is a trusted tool for his marketing budgeting process. "This tool quickly became a necessity. It was extremely intuitive. It just became one of the ways we do business. To be honest, if they took it away, I'd cry. They have a customer in us."

About Trimble

Trimble provides location-based solutions such as GPS, laser, optical, and inertial technologies. It holds 900 patents, and integrates its positioning expertise with application software, wireless communications, and services in a variety of industries including agriculture, engineering and construction, transportation, and wireless communications infrastructure. www.trimble.com