The Challenge

A globally recognized premium athletic apparel brand faced increasing complexity in its enterprise planning and FP&A processes.

The Annual Operating Plan (AOP) was managed through hundreds of Excel-based business cases stored across SharePoint, creating version control issues, duplicated effort, and inconsistent reporting across teams. Planning cycles were slow, highly manual, and difficult to scale.

All initiatives were treated with the same level of rigor, regardless of size or strategic importance, creating unnecessary workload and slowing down decision-making. Leadership lacked real-time visibility into portfolio performance, limiting their ability to prioritize investments, align stakeholders, and allocate capital effectively.

As the organization scaled, these inefficiencies became more pronounced. Data was fragmented across systems, collaboration was inconsistent, and planning workflows lacked structure and governance.

The client evaluated traditional enterprise solutions, including ServiceNow SPM, but these platforms required significant upfront investment and multi-year implementation timelines. They were not aligned with the organization’s need for speed, flexibility, and rapid time to value.

The organization required a modern approach to digitize the AOP process, streamline FP&A workflows, and enable real-time enterprise planning visibility — without the cost and complexity of legacy enterprise platforms.

Client details have been generalized to protect confidentiality.

Our Approach

Gravitas partnered with the client to implement Laminar™, a scalable strategy execution and enterprise planning platform designed to digitize and streamline the entire AOP lifecycle.

The transformation replaced fragmented, manual workflows with a structured, centralized system across five core areas:

Digitized Intake and Planning Workflows

Laminar™ introduced structured digital intake processes, allowing initiatives to be categorized (new, incremental, ongoing) and standardized across business units.

This improved data consistency and enabled more effective prioritization across the portfolio.

Real-Time Financial Visibility and Rollups

The platform enabled real-time dashboards with multi-year CapEx and OpEx rollups, providing leadership with a consolidated view of financial performance and investment allocation.

Automated Executive Reporting

Auto-generated leadership summaries delivered clear, concise insights for faster decision-making, significantly reducing manual reporting effort and improving executive alignment.

Structured Collaboration and Governance

Laminar™ introduced version control, autosave, and role-based access, enabling seamless collaboration across finance, FP&A, and enterprise planning teams.

End-to-End Lifecycle Visibility

From intake to approval, activation, and tracking, Laminar™ provided full lifecycle visibility across all initiatives within the AOP process.

Enterprise Integration and Security

The solution integrated with Microsoft 365, ensuring secure access and governance aligned with enterprise standards.

Key Outcomes

The transformation delivered measurable improvements across enterprise planning and FP&A:

• 3,000+ FTE hours saved annually through automation and streamlined workflows

• 5x return on investment driven by improved efficiency and decision-making

• 12-week pilot deployment, significantly faster than traditional enterprise implementations

• 300+ users onboarded across global teams

• $4B portfolio managed within a single platform

• Faster executive decision-making through real-time dashboards and rollups

• Improved planning transparency and cross-functional alignment

Business Impact

The organization transitioned from a fragmented, spreadsheet-driven planning model to a centralized, digital enterprise planning system.

Leadership now benefits from real-time visibility into investments, forecasts, and performance across the portfolio, enabling faster and more confident decision-making.

Finance and FP&A teams operate more efficiently with standardized workflows and reduced manual effort, while cross-functional teams collaborate more effectively through a shared platform.

By avoiding the cost and complexity of traditional enterprise solutions, the client achieved rapid time to value while building a scalable foundation for long-term growth.

Client Perspective

About Gravitas

Gravitas partners with QSR, retail, and consumer brands to drive growth, improve profitability, and execute transformation at scale.

Through a combination of senior advisory and proprietary platforms such as Laminar™ and Growth Hero™, we enable leadership teams to move from strategy to execution with speed, visibility, and discipline.

About Laminar™

Laminar™ empowers mid-sized enterprises with Fortune 500 best practices, enabling disciplined governance, real-time portfolio insights for faster and smarter decisions.

Laminar™ PPM leverages the Microsoft® Stack to deliver seamless integration, enterprise-grade security, and familiar tools like Azure, Power BI, and Microsoft 365. Empower your teams with smarter collaboration and data-driven decision-making—all in a solution you trust. Visit us on the Microsoft App Store.

Ready to Modernize Your Planning and AOP Process?

If your organization is looking to improve planning efficiency, forecasting accuracy, or enterprise visibility, we can help.