Pacific Ag Rentals brings key planning data into Power BI with Acterys write-back, cutting reporting and forecasting cycle by 67%

Pacific Ag Rentals is one of the United States’ leading independent agricultural equipment rental and sales companies. Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Salinas, California, the company has expanded to 15 branch locations spanning the east and west coasts, serving farmers across seven states with a diverse fleet of 4,000+ pieces of equipment from brands such as John Deere, Challenger, Kubota, Harlo, and Massey Ferguson.

Unlike manufacturer-aligned competitors, Pacific Ag Rentals prides itself on being brand-agnostic, sourcing the assets and tractors that customers actually want rather than pushing a single brand. That customer-first philosophy, combined with more than two decades of industry expertise, has made the company a trusted partner to the farming community with an expert staff ready to assist growers whatever their needs.

Today, with close to 300 employees spread across its growing branch network, the company’s data and reporting infrastructure needs to match the pace and precision of its operations. That transformation is being led by Paul Grissom, Data Management Specialist at Pacific Ag Rentals.

The Challenge

Scaling planning and reporting beyond the spreadsheet
When Grissom first joined Pacific Ag Rentals in a sales management capacity, the company’s information infrastructure was entirely manual. Every sales report, budget, forecast and month-end summary built by hand in spreadsheets. For a company with one or two branches, that approach was manageable. But Pacific Ag Rentals has grown fast and is no longer a smaller operation.

“A lot of the processes that we had, especially when it came to information flow, was very mechanical and extremely manual and spreadsheet-based,” recalled Paul. “Now, with up to 15 branches and pushing close to 300 employees and 4,000 pieces of equipment, that data flow has to move a lot quicker and has to be a lot more accurate.

“I was tasked with reporting sales performance to his team, breaking results down from an annual view down to monthly and even weekly cadences. But the manual effort required was enormous. On the sales side alone, we were spending approximately one full week every month simply compiling, processing, and formatting data into a presentable report. Before any of it could be reported, the data had to be gathered by hand, chased up at each branch, keyed in and reconciled,” he added.

Two weeks behind
This problem wasn’t only limited to the sales function. Consolidating sales data at month-end typically took around two weeks, sometimes even more depending on the time of the year. Looking back, Paul remembers how “at the beginning of the month you never wanted to go to the finance office because they were always under pressure to get answers produced in a timely fashion.”

And because there was always a two-week lag, this inevitably meant that leadership was perpetually working with stale information, potentially unable to course correct in time to make a meaningful difference. In a speed-sensitive, customer-facing business like equipment rental, where responsiveness is a competitive differentiator, this represented a potential structural vulnerability.

The spreadsheets were not just slow. Versions conflicted, copies multiplied, and when someone left, their process left with them.

“A lot of times people will develop spreadsheets or other processes that only they know,” said Paul. “We knew that we had to evolve this information infrastructure process into a more standardized process – one that would survive personnel changes, scale with new branches, and deliver consistent results without requiring unreasonable levels of individual effort.”

Requirement for an enterprise planning solution

“We knew we required an enterprise-class planning solution to support the business. Fortunately we had worked closely with P3 Adaptive, a data intelligence consulting firm, on a recent sales data project,” continued Paul. “We had great success with P3 on the sales data management side, and asked them for recommendations for a planning solution.”

Pacific Ag Rentals had already adopted Microsoft Power BI as its analytics and distribution platform – first for sales reporting, then progressively across the business. Any new financial planning tool would need to support that ecosystem. P3 recommended Acterys, a planning solution built natively for Power BI. It offered not just reporting, but also a genuine write-back capability. This would allow Pacific Ag Rentals users to contribute data, budgets, and variance commentary directly back into the centralized model people already report from.

Configured around Pacific Ag Rentals’ own processes
In addition to its seamless integration with Power BI and write-back performance, Pacific AG Rentals’ also particularly valued the flexibility of the Acterys system in its ability to be configured around the company’s own processes. “A lot of the tools we had witnessed in the past required us to conform with them,” said Paul. “With Acterys it was much more flexible. Working with P3 and the Acterys team we were able to mould the entire platform around the way we needed.”

Implementing Acterys Planning Intelligence within weeks
Pacific Ag Rentals worked with P3’s consulting team to drive its Acterys implementation once the technical environment was established. Within a matter of weeks, the team had not only replicated Pacific Ag Rentals’ legacy complex spreadsheet processes, but they had also enhanced them.

According to Paul: “we got the consulting team in, face to face with me and my ops team, my finance team, and really sat down and mapped out all of our processes and all of our needs. We were able to not only replicate what we were doing in a much more controlled environment, but we also enhanced a lot of the processes and procedures in Acterys that we just didn’t have the expertise, didn’t have the time, and didn’t have the people to implement in our earlier spreadsheet versions.”

A key concern for Paul Grissom when kicking off the Acterys project was scalability, having previously worked on systems that became dead-ends as the business grew. That worry proved unfounded. “My biggest worry was that we were going to build out something that wasn’t going to be able to grow with us. Acterys gave us the ability to scale, to model, to connect, to build out to our hearts’ content, and be future-proof as best as we can.”

The Results

Transitioning from reactive to real-time

Cutting sales reporting and planning time by 67% – Dramatic reductions in sales reporting and Co-ordinating sales performance and projections was a critical element of the Pacific Ag Rentals monthly reporting process. Working with Acterys has enabled the company’s Data Management team to telescope this process from up to 15 days manually down to just five days because branch teams now enter and validate figures directly in Power BI through Acterys write-back, instead of gathering and consolidating them by hand. This has also freed up the company’s finance team to focus on higher value financial work such as analysis and balance sheet development.

Streamlined annual budgeting process – Before Acterys the annual budgeting process was a logistical challenge, impacted by version conflicts, data entry errors and lost time. With Acterys, Pacific Ag Rentals now completes its budgeting cycle before year-end: a transformation that gives leadership a full, finalized plan in place before the new fiscal period begins. The write-back capability for Power BI is central to this: branch managers and cost centre owners can contribute their figures directly into the centralized model, with approval gates in place to maintain data integrity.

Establishing a single source of truth – Acterys has given Pacific Ag Rentals something it never had before: one definitive version of the truth. In the spreadsheet era, multiple copies of the same file would exist across inboxes, each slightly different, none guaranteed to be current. Decisions were made on data that might already be obsolete. Now everyone works from one model in Power BI, because figures are written back into it rather than exported into copies.

Ensuring accountability at branch level – Previously a lengthy, email-driven process of spreadsheet handoffs, Acterys has changed variance reporting into a live, centralized function. Branch managers review results in real time and enter their variance commentary directly into the model in Power BI. This is Acterys write-back in daily use, and significantly cuts the amount of management time needed to discuss variances.

From rear-view mirror to forward windshield – Paul Grissom has a clear long-term vision: to move the company from reactive to proactive – using real-time financial intelligence to anticipate needs, reposition assets, and get ahead of market shifts. The farming sector is cyclical and sensitive to external forces. Having financial history and commentary that can be recalled instantly, alongside live actuals, gives Pacific Ag Rentals a meaningful edge.

“With Acterys in place, being able to tap into live information in Power BI as business is happening has been proven invaluable,” said Paul. “It’s not only giving us that rear-view mirror look, but also enabling us to tap into more of the real-time results, so that way we can start modeling more future-looking information as we continue to evolve.”

What’s Next

Looking ahead with Acterys
Pacific Ag Rentals isn’t standing still. The successful implementation of Acterys Planning Intelligence has opened up a new set of goals. The company is now focused on deeper ERP integration, more granular operational reporting down to the branch, technician, and individual asset level, and the build-out of KPI dashboards that put the right financial signals in front of the right people: not everyone, but the individuals responsible for each cost centre or revenue stream.

“Our focus has been very much around how do we become more efficient as a company. But there’s so much more I can see coming down the pipeline,” explained Paul Grissom. “New Power BI-specialist team members have been added specifically to build out the financial reporting capabilities that Pacific Ag Rentals simply never had the bandwidth to develop before. The business is now able to focus on managing process rather than dealing with issues as they happen. That’s a fundamental shift in how a growing enterprise like Pacific Ag Rentals operates.”

Pacific Ag Rentals has clearly demonstrated the benefits of configuring Acterys around its own core processes, with Acterys write-back to the
Power BI model people already report from now supporting key activities including budgeting with write-back, forecasting, and variance commentary.

Results

• Shrinking month-end sales reporting and planning from 15 days to 5 with Acterys Planning Intelligence letting the finance team focus on higher-value activities
• Establishing a single source of truth with Acterys write-back to Power BI ensuring that everyone’s looking at the same thing
• Transforming branch variance reporting into a live, centralized function as Acterys write-back replaces a lengthy process of spreadsheet handoffs
• Tapping into real-time results with Acterys helps Pacific Ag Rentals move from reactive to proactive mode when handling cyclical farming sector issues