Inspired Entertainment delivers content, technology, hardware and services for regulated gaming, betting, lottery and leisure businesses across the world. Active in approximately 35 jurisdictions globally, it provides systems, terminals and content for more than 50,000 gaming machines in betting shops, pubs, gaming halls and more. And it delivers virtual sports products through more than 44,000 channels, as well as digital games for over 100 websites and a range of other entertainment solutions for more than 19,000 installed devices.
Business challenge
Inspired Entertainment needed a new, unified financial system to enable more rigorous reporting and streamlined processes.
Transformation
The company has moved from a fragmented approach, over-reliant on Excel, to a state-of-the-art solution that is delivering accurate, detailed information from a single source to support rigorous reporting and intelligent decision making
Business benefits
- Accelerated reporting for enhanced business agility
- Improved forecasting enables informed, flexible management
- Accurate, integrated data for better decision making
Business challenge story
Responding to the need for better work/life balance
As a US company, Inspired Entertainment, whose shares are traded on the Nasdaq exchange in New York, was committed to working towards a more efficient way of financial reporting. And when it acquired Novomatic UK’s Gaming Technology Group, it suddenly had five more individual in-house financial systems to deal with.
“Workday Adaptive Planning has massively streamlined our processes and is supporting greatly improved work/life balance for our finance people.”
Alastair Harris, Finance Systems Development Manager, Inspired Entertainment
Alastair Harris, Inspired Entertainment’s Finance Systems Development Manager, explains, “It was already tough before the acquisition to pull together all the group numbers and other valuable information that was needed for accurate reporting – but it was much tougher afterwards. Above all, it was taking its toll on our finance people.”
It was recognised across the business that a new, unified system was required, and the Inspired Entertainment team considered 15 different options. The primary consideration was the work-life balance of Finance team members. As Alastair Harris explains, “They had been largely reliant on Excel to support their reporting needs, making them over-reliant on time-consuming and risk-laden manual processes. This was not only stressful for them – it also made it extremely difficult to keep up with the reporting demands of the newly floated business.”
“Almost from the first moment, Workday was the solution that our people wanted.”
Alastair Harris, Finance Systems Development Manager, Inspired Entertainment
Transformation story
A single version of data
One of the solutions the team looked at was Workday Adaptive Planning, which rapidly became a front runner in the selection process. “We were already confident that Workday would help us in all the areas that really mattered,” Alastair Harris explains. “We saw straightaway that it would give us a single version of data between systems and providing support for sensible, accurate forecasting. Beyond that, we fully supported onboarding ‘democracy’, and Workday was the solution that our people wanted.”
They liked the look and feel, already familiar to them through using modern interfaces and consumer apps in their private lives. Above all, they could see that Workday’s ease of use, flexibility and wide range of functions enabling them to build complex reports fast and accurately, was set to make their lives much easier.
Harris was also impressed by the support provided by the consultants chosen to support the implementation, ICit Business Intelligence. As he says, “Implementation took place during the COVID-19 pandemic. This meant there was none of the face-to-face contact that would usually be such a big part of a project like this one, and the process was slower than it would have been in ‘normal’ times. But the ICit team was highly supportive and rapidly built up our ‘comfort’ with working with the new system, sharing their knowledge with us and taking away a lot of the frustration that people often feel during implementation as they continue having to do the day job.”
Results story
Centralised, integrated and user friendly
Inspired Entertainment moved from manual processes and disparate data sources to a centralised, integrated and user-friendly solution that is revolutionising the speed and simplicity of the Finance team’s quarterly reporting in both the US and the UK.
According to Alastair Harris, “Improved work/life balance was practically immediate, as the frustrations of working with out-dated systems were replaced by the ability to integrate and manage data at the touch of a button.”
Harris and his colleagues are also experiencing first-hand the benefits of a truly integrated system, managing data from the company’s operations across the world. “It is far faster and simpler to use, with the risk of human error almost entirely eliminated,” he says. “And we can see that it has the potential to scale in line with the needs of the business as it grows.”
He also believes it is already delivering important strategic gains for the Finance department. As he says, “It will help change people’s jobs, revealing where the value is added for them as financial professionals. As we continue working towards a full forecasting solution, they will increasingly be associated with the ability to deliver high-quality predictive analytics and other information that helps the business carry out accurate scenario planning and make sensible decisions. That in turn will fuel future improvement as we are increasingly able to attract the best available talent.”
“Implementing Workday has almost entirely eradicated the potential for human error in our financial reporting.”
Alastair Harris, Finance Systems Development Manager, Inspired Entertainment
Ready to find out more?
We have helped many businesses around the UK implement a range of Financial Planning & Accounting features, that are offered by Workday Adaptive Planning.
Our team of specialist Workday Consultants can discuss your exact business needs, advise you on how to implement Workday Adaptive Planning within your finance practices and also offer training to those staff who will be using the software day-to-day.
