Case Study

Predictive Forecasting

Overview

The company struggled with delayed financial visibility across its projects. Project managers maintained separate Excel trackers for budgets, purchase orders, and labor hours. Accounting used a legacy ERP system that did not communicate with project-control spreadsheets.

As a result, executives had no consolidated view of project financial health. Forecasts were inconsistent, cash-flow reports were outdated, and resource allocation decisions were often reactive.

The leadership team engaged us to implement a cost forecasting and resource visibility dashboard that would unify project data, automate reporting, and introduce predictive analytics for proactive budget control.

Challenges

Project costs and labor hours were tracked…

Project costs and labor hours were tracked in Excel while procurement and invoicing lived in the accounting system.

Consolidation was entirely manual, leading to data…

Consolidation was entirely manual, leading to data mismatches and missing updates.

Forecasts were based on outdated snapshots and…

Forecasts were based on outdated snapshots and often revised multiple times per month.

Executives relied on “gut feel” instead of data

driven insights.

Supervisors couldn’t see real

time labor or equipment usage.

Over- and under

staffing occurred frequently between projects.

Our Solution

We began by consolidating all project, procurement, and accounting data into a centralized model. Historical cost, PO, and labor data were extracted from Excel trackers and synchronized with the ERP system through automated connectors. This eliminated manual data reconciliation and enabled daily refresh cycles, ensuring every stakeholder had access to current information.

A dynamic Power BI environment was developed to visualize cost performance and cash flow projections across all active projects.

Interactive dashboards replaced static reports, reducing reporting cycles from days to hours.

1. Project managers could monitor committed vs
Project managers could monitor committed vs. actual spend in real time.
2. Executives gained a portfolio-level view of financial health with drill
down access to individual projects.
3. Controllers received automated variance alerts for early…
Controllers received automated variance alerts for early detection of overruns.

Key Achievements

Predictive analytics replaced manual cost tracking, aligning forecasts with actuals and reducing budget deviation from 30% to under 8%.

Automated Power BI dashboards eliminated manual consolidation, cutting monthly reporting from 5 business days to less than one.

Real-time labor and equipment visibility allowed proactive redistribution across projects, minimizing idle time and overtime costs.

Unified data access and visual risk indicators enabled leadership to make faster, data-backed adjustments in resource and cost planning.

Result

The transition from fragmented spreadsheets to an intelligent forecasting system reshaped the company’s financial culture. Project managers stopped chasing numbers and started managing outcomes. Finance no longer reacted to overruns – they prevented them.

With unified dashboards, the leadership team could finally see where every dollar and hour was going – and what would happen next. The organization moved from firefighting to foresight, setting a new operational standard: predict before it happens, act before it costs.

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Lee Ebreo

VP of Engineering at Credit Ninja

These things would not have been achievable if we did not build our own in-house system and if we did not partner with Sphere to help us achieve our goals.

Selah Ben-Haim

VP of Engineering at Prominence Advisors

Our experience with Sphere and their team has been and continues to be fantastic. We keep throwing new projects at them, and they keep knocking them out of the park (including the rescue of a project that was previously bungled by another vendor).

Ben Crawford

Senior Product Manager at Enova Financial

I would expect to be delighted. It's been a really positive experience, working with Sphere, and I would expect you to have the same.

Mark Friedgan

CEO at CreditNinja

Sphere consistently prioritizes the needs of their clients, demonstrating both agility and teamwork. As an offshore team, they have been an integral part of our organization and we plan to continue growing with them.

René Pfitzner

Co-Founder at Experify

Sphere provided excellent full-stack development manpower to augment our team and help push our product forward. They are easy to work with, tech-savvy and proactive.

Bruce Burdick

Chief Information Officer at Integra Credit

We've been working with Sphere and its excellent consultants since our founding. I've found that they are true partners in the success of our business.

Jemal Swoboda

CEO at Dabble

The resources and developers that Sphere Software provides are skilled and have the required technical expertise, but more importantly, they have helped us build a culture of excellence within our team.

Arthur Tretyak

Founder and CEO at IntegraCredit

With Sphere, we were able to migrate in half the time it would take to train an additional FTE… and for a fraction of the cost. Our experience with Sphere has been exceptional.

Lee Ebreo

VP of Engineering at Credit Ninja

These things would not have been achievable if we did not build our own in-house system and if we did not partner with Sphere to help us achieve our goals.

Selah Ben-Haim

VP of Engineering at Prominence Advisors