Goodbye Abacus: Pacific College Levels Up Planning with Pigment

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At a Glance

  • Customer: Pacific College of Health and Science (PCHS)
  • Industry: Higher education (multi-site)
  • Business teams involved: Finance and FP&A, executive leadership, department leaders (expanding)
  • Planning platform: Pigment
  • Primary drivers for change: Reduce manual work, accelerate monthly close plus forecast cadence, stop scaling planning by adding headcount
  • Core use cases: Board reporting and board meeting financials in Pigment, Monthly forecasting and reforecasting, Tuition analysis by geography and program, Scenario planning for capital investments (build, staff, operate)
  • Status: Live and expanding, with additional use cases planned

Success Summary

Pacific College of Health and Science adopted Pigment to move beyond spreadsheet-driven planning and speed up forecasting and reporting without adding headcount. Early impact includes using Pigment for board meeting financials and board reporting, plus stronger driver-based insight into tuition, programs, and capital investment scenarios. PlanSimpli supported implementation through coordinated delivery and an adoption-first, train-the-trainer rollout.

Pacific College of Health and Science (PCHS) is a multi-site higher education institution operating in a competitive market with complex tuition dynamics, program mix decisions, and capital investment considerations. As the organization has grown, leadership needed a modern planning environment that could keep pace with the business and help leaders answer questions quickly and confidently.

The Challenge 

Before Pigment, planning and forecasting cycles required significant time and coordination, and the monthly close and forecast rhythm was slowed by manual work. The PCHS finance team captured it memorably: they wanted to “stop using an abacus,” and stop attempting to solve planning problems by adding more people to fix them.

Key challenges for PCHS included:

  • Slow, labor-intensive planning and forecasting cycles
  • Difficulty accelerating the monthly close and monthly forecast cadence
  • Board reporting that relied on manual assembly and spreadsheet-heavy workflows
  • Limited ability to model “what if” scenarios quickly, especially around capital investments

In short, PCHS needed a platform that could carry more of the heavy lifting so the team could spend less time managing mechanics and more time shaping decisions.

The Solution: Pigment, implemented by PlanSimpli

PCHS first learned about PlanSimpli through a strategic partner, and PlanSimpli introduced Pigment as an EPM platform. During the evaluation process, they reviewed multiple planning solutions, including OneStream. What stood out about Pigment was not simply that it checked boxes, but that it represented an entirely different way to operate.

Pigment delivered what PCHS was looking for:

  • Flexibility to model the business the way it actually works, not the way spreadsheets force it to work
  • A modern user experience that lowers friction and encourages adoption
  • Speed to insight, helping a lean team answer questions faster
  • A platform feel, not a patchwork of workbooks

PCHS described a clear “aha” moment when Pigment clicked: it was powerful enough for enterprise planning, but intuitive enough to feel like a natural evolution from Excel rather than a total reinvention.

Results and impact: from reporting production to decision readiness

1) Pigment has become the engine for board reporting

One of the most meaningful early outcomes: PCHS used Pigment to support board meeting financials and reporting. Instead of manually building board materials through spreadsheet handoffs, Pigment made reporting more repeatable, structured, and easier to refresh as assumptions change.

Their direction is clear: make board reporting increasingly “live” in Pigment so board cycles become routine, not heroic.

2) Faster monthly close and a more sustainable forecast rhythm

PCHS’s near-term focus is accelerating the monthly close and strengthening the monthly forecast cadence. With Pigment, they are reducing manual steps and building a more repeatable process that supports continuous forecasting.

The goal is not just faster output. It is faster confidence, and fewer “spreadsheet surprises” hiding in a tab nobody wants to open.

3) More strategic insight into tuition, programs, and investments

Pigment is helping PCHS move beyond high-level totals into driver-based understanding, including:

  • Tuition patterns by key geographies
  • Performance by key programs
  • Planning around capital investments tied to multi-site operations

This shift enables leadership conversations that are more forward-looking and specific, rather than post-mortems on last month’s variance.

4) Scenario planning for high-impact “what if” decisions

PCHS is using Pigment for scenario analysis, particularly around capital investments in onsite schools where staffing, buildout, and operational ramp have meaningful financial impact.

Pigment allows teams to model alternatives quickly, pressure-test assumptions, and make tradeoffs visible. The value is simple: better decisions, made earlier, with fewer blind spots.ue of leadership views and scorecards that make it easier for executives to see accurate data quickly, without manual reconciliation.

“To those considering Pigment: Evaluate the landscape, keep an open mind, and give yourself time to understand what modern planning platforms can do. Pigment may feel different at first, but once the ‘lightbulb’ moment happens, the flexibility and strategic value become obvious.”

Claudio Pico, Chief Financial Officer & Executive Vice President

Adoption and stakeholder feedback on Pigment

Early feedback on Pigment has been very positive, with stakeholders calling it highly user friendly. While Pigment has not yet been rolled out to every leader, PCHS expects broader adoption will further engage leaders and distribute planning ownership across functions.

When leaders can explore the numbers themselves, finance stops being the reporting factory and becomes the strategy partner. (A small change in workflow, a big change in sanity.)

What’s next 

PCHS sees Pigment as a long-term foundation, with a roadmap to expand use cases over time. Their vision includes:

  • Broader leader enablement and accountability through self-service access
  • Continued enhancement of forecasting and decision support
  • Leveraging historical performance to model future growth and potential expansion

They are not looking for a tool that produces a budget once a year. They are building a planning capability that stays relevant all year.

Why PlanSimpli?

Pacific College worked with PlanSimpli as their trusted implementation partner for Pigment. PlanSimpli helped drive a skilled delivery approach grounded in transparency, including:

  • Straight, practical guidance on what Pigment could do well and where boundaries were
  • Close coordination across customer stakeholders and the Pigment team
  • A train-the-trainer enablement model and a measured rollout designed to sustain adoption

PlanSimpli’s role was to ensure Pigment delivered value quickly while building internal capability at Pacific so the platform could expand across new use cases over time and grow with PCHS.

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If you’d like to learn more about how PlanSimpli can help you scale your organization’s planning and forecasting with Pigment, Contact us!