How Augury Got Back 3 Days a Month for Strategy and Analysis  

The Finance Problem: Manual overload with no source of truth

Gal Lazar, FP&A Manager at Augury, has  15 years of experience in finance roles. He wanted to move his team beyond manual, time-consuming Excel workflows and towards streamlined budgeting, analysis, and reporting.

The main challenges for the Augury team were fourfold:

1. Time-consuming data consolidation
   “Creating a Budget versus Actual report required extracting P&L data from NetSuite, exporting detailed reports, and manually combining everything in Excel,” Gal says. This process alone took four full business days every month–time that could have been spent on analysis and strategy.

2. Version control nightmares
   The team juggled dozens of Excel files (labeled V1 through V50). With no efficient way to track changes or validate data integrity, even simple updates meant opening multiple files, creating a significant risk for errors.

3. Limited visibility and analysis
   Without drill-down capabilities provided by Datarails, that is, allowing users to dive deeper into their data by selecting specific data points and breaking them down using different filters and dimensions, identifying discrepancies was nearly impossible. “Before Datarails, I couldn’t have caught a 2% variance discrepancy in our budgets.”

4. Broken linked Excel spreadsheets
   Almost every time the team would send a file, it would break because the linked file was password-protected or located on someone else’s drive. “It was a complete nightmare,” Gal adds. 

The Solution: One source of truth with insights at your fingertips

Gal led the Datarails implementation, which allowed him to tailor models and workflows to Augury’s needs with guidance from a supportive implementation team from Datarails.

Our customer success manager was incredible. He helped me when needed but also taught me to be self-sufficient in Datarails and build everything myself.

Gal LazarFP&A Manager

The implementation focused on three main areas:

1. Automated data consolidation
   Connecting their NetSuite financial data directly to their planning processes eliminated days of manual work.

2. Modular financial models
   Breaking their massive Excel model into manageable components with individual ownership by department leads improved accountability and accuracy.

3. Visual data connections and analysis
   Datarails’ Dataflow feature provides a comprehensive and structured overview of data processes and their dependencies. This provided Gal with clear visibility into how information flowed between systems and reports. Coupled with the drill-down capabilities, it became easy to uncover valuable insights.

The Results: Transformation beyond time savings

• 75% reduction in report preparation time
  That extra time is now invested in quality work, sitting with managers and analyzing numbers instead of manipulating spreadsheets.

We went from four days just to prepare Budget vs Actual reviews to less than one.

• 90-minute forecast updates
  Creating new forecast versions that previously took days now takes under 90 minutes, enabling more agile financial planning.

• Enhanced error detection
  “The drill-down feature is remarkable,” Gal explains. 

I can now immediately identify issues like unexpected severance expenses or budget surpluses that would have taken hours to catch in Excel—if we caught them at all.

• Improved stakeholder engagement
  With 20 stakeholders now accessing live dashboards, budget owners come to meetings with real-time visibility, leading to faster and more productive decisions.

• Complete audit trail
  “With Datarails’ version control, we can trace any change at any point.”

Datarails has added a new level of transparency we never had before.

Gal LazarFP&A Manager