Vivid customers don’t wait six months for value. They start by solving one reporting or budgeting problem completely, then use the time and capacity they get back to tackle the next one. That approach is reflected in Vivid CPM’s G2 benchmarks: two months to implement and four months to return on investment. Instead of a lengthy data warehouse project or a rebuild of every report at once, Vivid uses a rapid, iterative implementation cycle that turns existing reports into automated, maintainable templates.
The immediate payoff is straightforward: less manual reporting, more capacity for the finance team, and a short path to ROI. For Vivid customers, that is only the beginning.
The larger return comes as finance reinvests that capacity. Teams learn from the first implementation, expand into the next problem, and improve their financial operations in small, deliberate steps. A recent Vivid customer spotlight session brought together three finance teams at different points along that path. Their experiences point to a common pattern: solve one problem completely, build the team’s capability around it, then expand from there.
Start with one problem and solve it completely
Every team in the session began with a specific, contained goal rather than a full rollout.
Mark Marlatt of Bloedorn Lumber started by replacing Management Reporter with Vivid CPM, automating the reports his team already relied on while keeping the familiarity of Excel. Once that foundation was in place, they expanded into budgeting and then Vivid Flex. His advice to teams that feel they are only scratching the surface:
- Set a clear initial goal.
- Build it and get it working.
- Train the team until it is routine.
- Only then start exploring what comes next.
Mark called these baby steps, and made the point that the steps can move as fast or as slow, and be as small or as large, as the team is ready for.
Expand in small steps, not big leaps
The value compounds when each step builds on a stable base. Maala Gadhia, CPA, CA, Vice President Finance at MAD Elevator Inc., started by bringing the financial statements into Vivid, then added departmental reporting with commentary. From there, individual team members built their own supplemental reports, including gross margin analysis and manufacturing overhead detail the team had not been producing monthly before. Each addition gave leadership more depth without adding manual effort to the close.
Grow your builders, not just your features
Expansion happens through people as much as through capabilities. D.L., Financial Manager at RPS Composite, inherited Vivid from a predecessor who had taken only the first steps with it. He trained his whole team, widening the number of people able to create value with it.
Within a year, the number of report builders grew from a handful to fifteen, without creating fifteen versions of the truth. Because everyone builds from the same underlying financial definitions, reports stay consistent regardless of who creates them.
Each new report then makes the next one easier to build. Like Lego blocks, existing reporting components get reused and recombined into new views, so the organization’s reporting capability compounds as more people use Vivid. More builders lead to more ways of looking at the numbers, which lets finance serve more functions across the business.
D.L.’s simplest win came from a feature the team had overlooked for years: assigning report files to specific stakeholders, which removed version-control problems in Excel. When everyone in a meeting works from the same template and refreshes their own report, the group reaches answers faster and finance creates more value.
Go back to the experts as you scale
None of these teams expanded alone. Maala made a habit of asking two questions:
- What is the team still not pulling from Vivid that it could be?
- Where might an expert improve how we have set something up?
She described bringing a setup back to Vivid’s team to review for efficiency rather than assuming the first build was the best one. Treating the experts as an ongoing resource, not a one-time implementation contact, kept her team from settling for a good-enough process.
The path from setup to scale
Across three very different teams, the same sequence held:
- Solve one reporting or budgeting problem completely.
- Train the team until the process is routine.
- Add the next capability once the last one is stable.
- Grow the number of people that can build reports, reusing what already exists to create new views and deeper insight that serves a widening audience in the business faster.
- Return to the experts to refine what you have as you scale.
None of these teams tried to do everything at the start. Each solved the problem in front of it, made the process routine, and let the next opportunity reveal itself. The approach frees finance capacity gradually and keeps each step grounded in the one before it.
The Vivid difference
Most reporting environments get heavier as they grow. Every new report becomes one more thing finance has to answer questions about, fix, and maintain when the business changes. Vivid is built to reverse that equation. Self-service puts more report building in the hands of the business, while Change Once, Change Everywhere means a change does not have to be chased through report after report. Rather than each new report adding weight, every one becomes another building block for what comes next. The value of Vivid keeps widening without the workload widening with it.
If your team has one process solved and you are wondering what the next step looks like, we are glad to talk it through. Book a discovery call and we will walk through where you are today and where Vivid can take you next.
