Consolidating 100 Spreadsheets into One Connected Workspace

About Triple Crown

Triple Crown’s mission is to build a better tournament experience and run professional and organized youth and college sports events.

• Industry: Event Services
• Location: Fort Collins, Colorado

“I can create a report, depending on what it is, [in] as little as 15 minutes,” says Alyssa Morrison, Executive Analyst at Triple Crown. “I can spend more time creating more complex, in-depth reports. But if someone just wants to see something quick, I can do that too. I'm no longer worried about breaking anything or making sure the formulas are right.”

ALYSSA MORRISON, Executive Analyst at Triple Crown

Manual Data Entry is a thing of the past

Before Limelight, manual entry of budgets from the accounting system was the most time-consuming activity. Alyssa recalls printing out spreadsheets from their accounting system, and then using a ruler to match numbers from the GL to the completed events. Once she found the match, she would manually input the numbers back into her spreadsheet. Tedious data entry consumed her day, leaving no time for strategic planning and analysis.

“The thought of forecasting forward or doing any analytics wasn't even an option because you didn't have current data. Anything that was done was already out of date,” said Alyssa.

Their other issue was in the lack of flexibility offered in Excel. Basic things like renaming an event or adding a GL account put a lot of stress on the rest of the templates. Given the way spreadsheets roll up, if they made a change on one, it had to be manually changed on all the others. If not, there was a risk that formulas would break, and the numbers wouldn’t roll up accurately. Limelight instantly streamlined this entire process. Reports and templates can be easily modified without worrying about broken formulas and links. This has been a game-changer for their team’s productivity and trust.

Creating Reports with Ease and Confidence

Ease of report creation has added tremendous value to Triple Crown. The team went from a day’s worth of work fixing broken links to real-time access as the season progresses.

“I can create a report, depending on what it is, [in] as little as 15 minutes,” said Alyssa. “I can spend more time creating a more complex, in-depth reports but if someone just wants to see something quick, I can easily do that too. I'm no longer worried about breaking anything or making sure the formulas are right.”

Ease of report creation was a leading factor to choosing Limelight as their solution. This feature has helped with creating reports for college coach coordinators who are responsible for just two line-items in each event. “Creating reports specifically for those people without them having to go into every single budget is huge and a really big value add to their productivity and time,” said Alyssa.

Accurate, Timely, and Insightful Reports for their Board

Triple Crown can now present better analysis to the board without having to manually create the reports each year. Their CFO commented that in the past reports often didn't match some GL items because of the manual way reports were created. Now, Limelight has ensured that they provide consistent, accurate information to their board every time.

This in part also comes from the increased level of collaboration between management and event directors, made possible with Limelight. Alyssa says the combination of the event directors’ knowledge of their territory and customers, with the input of the CEO and CFO to make sure that the company is growing, helps them get the most accurate budgets presented to the board.

By pulling all their information into one platform, Alyssa says that the team can now see the correlation between their different financial KPIs and business performance. She hopes to expand on this capability in the future to start implementing more efficient practices within the company. By getting more done in less time, they can continue to focus on areas that will allow the company to grow in the future.