The Challenge

Liqid Investments, a leading digital wealth management platform in Berlin, faced increasing complexity in their financial operations as the company scaled. The finance team, led by Jeroen Moonemans, needed to streamline fragmented processes across four key areas: Performance Management, Headcount Planning, Revenue Planning, and Opex Planning.

With manual Excel processes, it was nearly impossible to maintain real-time insights and adapt quickly to changing market conditions. Previously, they relied on a combination of tools including NetSuite, BigQuery, Salesforce, and manual Excel consolidations.

Jeroen’s team found themselves spending too much time reconciling spreadsheets instead of focusing on strategic decision-making. In order to do so, they started looking for an intuitive, scalable solution that would allow real-time insights and eliminate manual work while enabling flexible, accurate scenario planning.

The Solution

Liqid Investments chose Abacum to centralize and automate their FP&A processes. Managing their key use cases end to end in Abacum —Performance Management, Headcount Planning, Revenue Planning, and Opex Planning— allowed the team to streamline workflows and provide a holistic view of the business. They implemented Abacum using a phased approach, starting with financial statements and actuals, then moving to forecasting, and finally incorporating operational KPIs to centralise all significant business data.

Thanks to Abacum, we’ve automated our monthly reporting, reducing manual consolidation time by three to four days every month. Now, we simply refresh the data sources, and everything updates automatically.

Jeroen Moonemans, Head of Finance at LIQID

The Impact

The implementation of Abacum brought immediate improvements, particularly in forecasting and scenario planning:

Enhanced Forecasting Efficiency

The finance team transitioned to a rolling forecast model, updating projections monthly based on new actuals. This eliminated the need for manual adjustments and reduced the entire budget cycle from 10 weeks to just 4-6 weeks.

Seamless Scenario Planning:

Abacum’s scenario planning capabilities allowed Liqid to test various business scenarios effortlessly. By managing different versions of forecasts and budgets, the team could adapt quickly to new information and provide accurate insights to stakeholders. This has proven invaluable for navigating the uncertainties of a fast-growing fintech environment.

Streamlined Data Integration and Real-Time Insights

Abacum integrated seamlessly with Liqid’s existing data sources like GSheets, NetSuite, and Salesforce, providing a single source of truth for financial and operational data. This multi dimensionality allowed the team to drill down to the most granular data level with ease.

Improved Collaboration and Transparency

With Abacum, budget owners have gained direct access to real-time financial data, enhancing collaboration across departments. The finance team has shifted from data providers to strategic partners, driving better business outcomes.

Conclusion

Abacum has become an indispensable tool for Liqid Investments, revolutionizing their approach to forecasting and scenario planning. By automating manual tasks, integrating key data sources, and enabling agile scenario analysis, Abacum has empowered the finance team to make faster, data-driven decisions.

As Jeroen put it, “We’ve just begun, and I’m excited to see how we can leverage Abacum even more in the coming year.”