The Challenge

Clearlink is a digital marketing company partnering with major telco brands. With a distributed business model and many teams influencing key revenue and cost drivers, their forecasting and budgeting processes involved more than 50 contributors across the organization.

According to Christian Ostler, Director of FP&A, the absence of a single place for people to view data or understand the impact of their inputs meant the team relied on multiple documents, repeated consolidations, and ongoing requests for information throughout the month. Visibility into financials varied, and ensuring ownership of budgets and forecasts across departments required a more structured approach.

Clearlink evaluated more than 15 FP&A tools, ranging from Excel-based solutions to fully integrated legacy platforms. Excel-driven tools did not solve the visibility and consolidation challenges, while more rigid platforms lacked the flexibility needed for Clearlink’s models. The team needed something that struck the right balance and Abacum was the clear fit.

The Solution

Clearlink chose Abacum because it provided the ideal middle ground: flexible enough to support their complex operational logic, but also integrated enough to eliminate manual work and maintain a single source of truth.

Abacum enabled Clearlink to build:

• Dedicated spaces for each team (marketing, sales, departments)

• Granular visibility into drivers and financial impact

• Immediate roll-ups of all inputs into a single company-level view

• Self-service reporting for every stakeholder

• A seamless onboarding experience for finance and business users

Christian Ostler highlighted that Abacum had

“the flexibility we needed to get the right views in everybody’s hands, have everything be visible, and really connect ownership to the forecasting and budgeting process.”

He also emphasized the importance of alignment:

“We want our budgets and forecasts to be reflections of the business and of the exact way that it works.”

Another key factor in Clearlink’s decision was the sales process and product experience:

1. A truly customer-focused team actively improving the platform based on constant feedback

2. Full access to test Abacum during the evaluation process, which gave him confidence that the tool would match expectations during implementation

As he noted, “Some of these other tools are pretty stable… they’ve kind of reached what they want to do. Abacum is going to continue to improve.”

The Impact

Faster forecasting cycles: Clearlink reduced their forecasting cycle from 6–8 weeks to just 2–4 weeks. With the process now centralized and collaborative, the team shifted from quarterly cycles to monthly rolling forecasts that take as little as a week to update.

Greater ownership and transparency: With 50–75 contributors participating directly in the process, each department now fully owns its inputs. Abacum’s dedicated spaces allow every stakeholder to see exactly how their decisions affect financial outcomes.

Improved reporting quality: Reporting is now centralized, with commentary, notes, and actuals in a single place. Teams can answer questions faster, reducing duplicated effort and providing more consistent output.

Granular data and re-usable analysis: By integrating BI data and building granular views directly in Abacum, Clearlink can run ad-hoc analyses that stay up-to-date and are easily shared with stakeholders.

Easy onboarding and flexibility: Clearlink onboarded complex models smoothly, and users quickly got comfortable with the platform thanks to its intuitive structure and adaptable workflows.

Conclusions

Clearlink found in Abacum a platform that balanced flexibility with integration, something neither spreadsheets nor rigid legacy tools could offer. With Clearlink’s team able to involve dozens of contributors, streamline reporting, and significantly accelerate forecasting cycles, Abacum now supports a more transparent, accountable, and predictable planning process across the company.

Christian summarized the value clearly: speed, visibility, and ownership.