Using Allstacks, Enverus trims 70% off time spent preparing software capitalization report

Overview

At Enverus, teams found it both time consuming and labor intensive to produce reliable and accurate software capitalization reports at scale. They wanted to ditch the unwieldy timesheets, stop toiling over spreadsheets, and slash the hands-on time involved. The results with Allstacks: A 70% reduction in time spent gathering the required data, 90% less human effort to audit the data, less friction throughout the internal and external audit process, and a repeatable, lightweight process that scales with the company’s needs.

Background

Enverus is the most trusted energy-dedicated SaaS company, with a platform built to maximize value from generative AI, offering anytime, anywhere access to analytics and insights. These include benchmark cost and revenue data sourced from more than 95% of U.S. energy producers and more than 40,000 suppliers. Our platform, with intelligent connections, drives more efficient production and distribution, capital allocation, renewable energy development, investment, and sourcing. Our experienced industry experts support our customers through thought leadership, consulting, and technology innovations. We provide intelligence across the energy ecosystem: renewables, oil and gas, financial institutions, and power and utilities, with more than 6,000 customers in 50 countries. Learn more at Enverus.com.

The Challenge

For years, Enverus dedicated extensive time and resources to manually determine the ratio of capitalizable to non-capitalizable work for their software R&D cost capitalization initiative. This process continued until they discovered a more efficient solution with Allstacks.

During a period of rapid growth and expansion internally, Enverus started to explore additional use cases for their knowledge and analytics platform in the energy sector. As the company grew, there were more employees to account for and more internal lines of business to run through the software cost capitalization process. This work centered around manual data gathering for engineering leadership like Distinguished Program Manager Lukas Vrbecky, and finance team members like Accounting Manager, Hannah Haustein, and it quickly grew unwieldy, requiring them to manage increasingly more business units internally. “The bigger we got, the more employees people had and the longer it took. We outgrew the process we had in place before,” Hannah Haustein said. It was clearly time to find a reliable and accurate solution to help automate and produce accounting-ready records of capitalizable software work.

Enverus’ process for software R&D cost capitalization was highly manual and labor-intensive. It involved extensive use of spreadsheets, frequent time logging, and a heavy reliance on managers to provide accurate data without an easy way to automate and validate the data at hand. This cumbersome process not only consumed significant amounts of time but was also susceptible to errors and inconsistencies due to the human responsibility for logging and double checking that the data is correct. As the company scaled, increasing delays in financial reporting put pressure on the accounting team, particularly during month-end close processes.

Time for a change

Recognizing the need for a more efficient solution so they could eliminate manual timesheets, Enverus began their search for the right solution to suit their needs. They needed something that could seamlessly integrate with their existing systems, especially Jira, and automate their software capitalization data gathering process. After evaluating alternatives and weighing options against their existing internal process, Enverus chose Allstacks for its robust automation capabilities and its ability to provide reliable, accurate data—saving engineering teams precious time in their day.

Focus areas & requirements

The team kept several areas in mind as they began this process: they wanted to be more efficient with the amount of time spent on cost capitalization efforts (in both the engineering and finance teams); they also need to ensure the accuracy and reliability of automating the data from Jira; the entire process had to be scalable as the company grew; and finally, there had to be a high degree of confidence in the auditability of the report. At the end of the day, these factors were non-negotiable in the decision making process and positioned Allstacks as the best solution to meet Enverus’ needs.

Why Allstacks was the right solution

By integrating Allstacks with Jira, Enverus was able to automate the collection and analysis of capitalization data that previously took days to log into spreadsheets, validate ad-hoc with individual engineers or by combing through Jira tickets one-by-one, and had to be maintained over time.

Implementing Allstacks provided significant benefits for both engineering and finance: 

• No more manual data collection: Calculating labor hours and numbers for hundreds of employees is now automated for the team via Allstacks’ integration with Jira, reducing errors and saving time.
• Pain-free audits: Instead of bugging dozens of managers each month, the team can easily find data points and reference information on their own with a reliable and detailed audit trail.
• Countless hours saved: Dependable and automated reporting means software capitalization data is delivered to managers earlier, and has a ripple effect on productivity for the rest of the team—allowing errors to be fixed proactively and eliminating ad-hoc outreach, meaning the engineering and accounting teams can focus on more value-add tasks
• Scalable for rapid growth: No matter how many teams and managers join Enverus, an at-a-glance team hierarchy lets managers easily identify whose labor and projects are being capitalized. Automation ensures that audit processes can handle increasing volumes of data as the company grows.

Results

With the help of Allstacks, Enverus revolutionized its software capitalization process. Lukas was able to use Allstacks to automate the data gathering process and determine what work was capitalizable vs non-capitalizable efficiently, and produce reports in a repeatable manner instead of spending unnecessary time toiling with spreadsheets that were prone to humanerror. The transition to Allstacks also meant a substantial reduction in the time spent manually verifying and training employees on data capitalization—Lukas was able to confidently handle this work on his own without onboarding additional resources.

For Hannah and the finance organization, the benefits were equally impactful. Streamlining the process enabled Hannah to receive and process capitalization data much faster, reducing the month-end close time by 70% of the original time investment. The automation ensured that data was accurate and reliable, simplifying the audit trail for their external auditors. With Allstacks, scalability was no longer a cause for concern. Instead, Enverus was able to seamlessly handle their growing data needs without compromising efficiency. By freeing up valuable time for managers like Lukas and accounting personnel like Hannah—who were on the hook for this process to produce positive results—Enverus was able to redirect resources towards more strategic business initiatives and focus on driving further innovation in the energy sector. “There’s now a huge ripple effect of productivity on our team,” Hannah Haustein mentioned.

Now equipped with a comprehensive software capitalization solution that addresses their key challenges head-on, improving operational efficiency and supporting their company growth trajectory, the future is brighter than ever for Enverus as they continue automating their cost capitalization process. With Allstacks, Lukas and Hannah are better positioned as subject matter experts in their respective domains, and have more confidence in their ability to deliver defensible and accurate capitalization reports on-time. With a ripple effect of productivity throughout the organization due to time saved with Allstacks, Enverus can continue to embrace automation with Allstacks to help produce their best work, faster.