Basico enters into partnership with Drivetrain and expands its FP&A offering

Basico has entered into a partnership with Drivetrain, an AI-native platform for budgeting, forecasting, scenario analysis, financial modelling and reporting. The partnership expands the range of FP&A solutions that Basico can offer its clients – particularly when the finance function needs to connect operational and financial planning, update forecasts when assumptions change and retain controlled ownership of the models that support management decision-making.

Management’s most important questions rarely follow the reporting calendar. If sales expectations change, an investment is brought forward or the staffing plan is adjusted, management must be able to understand the consequences for capacity, profitability and liquidity while there is still time to act.

Answering these types of questions requires more than an ERP report or a projection of historical development. The finance function must combine actual figures with information from across the organisation – including the sales pipeline, FTEs, payroll costs and operational capacity – and translate these inputs into forecasts and scenario analyses that remain coherent as circumstances change.

Drivetrain has been developed for this purpose. It connects data from systems such as ERP, CRM, HR and payroll in a shared planning platform, where financial and operational drivers can be modelled in context. By reducing the manual work involved in collecting, reconciling and validating data, the platform can give the finance function more time to examine the underlying assumptions, understand the implications and provide management with a well-founded view of possible developments.

No technology can make the future predictable. It can, however, shorten the path from a changed assumption to an informed decision.

Basico already helps companies strengthen their FP&A processes and financial management models, develop Finance Business Partnering and select and implement the technology needed to support this work. The partnership with Drivetrain expands the range of platforms that we can implement for our clients.

Drivetrain is particularly relevant when a company needs flexible modelling, a closer connection between operational and financial planning and a solution that the finance function can understand and continuously develop without becoming dependent on external specialists.

Drivetrain stands out not only because of its broad functionality and integrated AI features, but also because the platform’s design addresses a number of practical challenges that are often crucial to whether an FP&A solution continues to create value after go-live:

• Model changes can be managed without changing historical figures that have already been reported. Calculations can be adjusted for future periods without affecting versions that have already been reported. This enables the finance function to continue developing the model without undermining confidence in previous reporting, while avoiding the familiar problem of approved figures changing retrospectively.

• Financial and operational drivers can be planned in context. Actual results can be combined with factors such as sales pipeline development, headcount, payroll costs and capacity. The forecast can therefore reflect the conditions shaping the business rather than being based primarily on historical trends.

• Reporting can be adapted as management’s questions evolve. The finance function can analyse results from different perspectives without rebuilding the underlying model whenever a different view is needed. This provides a better basis for answering questions during the decision-making process itself, rather than returning with an analysis several days later.

• AI can make the model’s logic easier to understand and further develop. Drivetrain’s integrated AI features can help users understand and explain calculations, create formulas, investigate variances and build reports and dashboards. The value lies not only in producing outputs more quickly, but also in making the model’s structure and underlying logic accessible to more people.

• User-friendliness supports lasting adoption. The user experience may not be the most prominent element in a business case for new technology, but it is often crucial to whether a planning platform becomes an established part of the organisation’s ongoing operations. Our experience shows that organisations that take ownership of the solution are more likely to achieve lasting value from it. High user-friendliness is therefore essential to ensuring organisational adoption.

Taken together, these features address a persistent challenge within FP&A: creating a model that is sufficiently advanced to support complex decisions, while also being so transparent and adaptable that the finance function can manage it with confidence.

The relevance of AI in a planning platform does not lie in placing a conversational user interface on top of a conventional tool. Its more important contribution is to make the model’s structure and logic accessible to the people who need to work with, explain and further develop it.

In many organisations, detailed knowledge of the budget and forecast model is concentrated with the person who originally built the model or with the external advisers who implemented the solution. As a result, even minor changes can take longer and become more expensive than necessary. At the same time, the finance function may find it difficult to explain how a key figure is calculated or how a single assumption affects the overall forecast.

When users can ask the platform to explain a calculation, assist with a formula or trace the logic behind a result, this knowledge becomes less dependent on individual specialists. When these features are used with the necessary quality assurance and professional judgement, they can support implementation and handover, reduce key-person dependency and make future development more manageable.

This is important because the requirements for planning are constantly changing. Companies grow, reorganise and carry out acquisitions; business models change; and demand, prices, exchange rates and regulation continue to evolve. A model that reflects the business at go-live will therefore gradually lose its relevance unless the finance function is able to adapt the model’s structure, calculations and assumptions.

Drivetrain’s combination of flexible modelling, accessible logic and AI-supported development is designed to give the finance function greater ownership of the planning platform. Ownership does not mean that everyone should be able to change everything, however. A reliable planning platform still requires clear roles, access rights, approval processes and model governance, including clear decisions about who is allowed to view, enter and approve data, and who has the authority to change the model itself.

The aim is controlled ownership: The finance function should be able to understand and further develop the model within a clearly defined framework.

Even a well-functioning planning platform will not improve your forecast or budget if it merely transfers an existing budgeting process to new technology. Before implementation begins, the organisation must clarify which management decisions the solution should support, which financial and operational drivers the model should be based on, how often the outlook should be updated and how the finance function should collaborate with the rest of the business.

Basico combines experience in FP&A, financial management models and Finance Business Partnering with expertise in data, technology, implementation and change management. If Drivetrain is the right choice, we can help the client to:

• Define the management questions and scenarios that the solution must be able to address.

• Identify relevant value drivers and the data required to model them.

• Design forecasting processes, roles and governance.

• Prepare and integrate data and configure the platform.

• Build the internal capabilities required to operate and further develop the solution after go-live.

The partnership gives Basico another strong opportunity to help companies create coherence between their forecasting processes, organisation, data and technology. Our approach remains needs-driven: We start with the decisions for which the client wants a better basis and then assess whether Drivetrain is the right foundation for creating value – both now and as the organisation develops.