How AwardSpring cut scenario planning from weeks to minutes

When Alex took over as CEO of AwardSpring, the company was actually ahead of plan. But teams couldn’t explain why. The financial model existed in Excel, pulling data periodically from HubSpot and QuickBooks, but there was a lack of trust in those numbers. So when Alex wanted to invest more aggressively into what was working, the team hesitated; they couldn’t pinpoint where the positive variance was coming from or how long it would last. Strategic conversations went on for weeks.

With Runway’s live data and connected model, Alex could drill into the actual drivers behind performance shifts and act accordingly.

Only one person understood the Excel model. Alex’s controller had built a sophisticated model over time, and was open to evolving it, but like many legacy spreadsheets, it had become a black box. When Alex wanted to test a strategic change, he couldn’t just open it up and adjust assumptions himself. He had to hand her the inputs in “disjointed sheets”… and wait.

When Alex wanted to explore a completely different sales staffing model that would fundamentally change their capacity plan and revenue trajectory, the old process would have taken “3-4 weeks minimum,” requiring multiple rounds of back-and-forth to rebuild the spreadsheet logic because the new staffing model “kind of broke fundamentally” how their model was structured. With Runway, Alex spun up the scenario himself in 10-15 minutes, immediately saw the near-term vs. long-term impact, and had his answer in the same meeting: it wasn’t feasible. The short-term costs to cash flow didn’t outweigh the benefits.

2026 planning was challenging. AwardSpring is lean, and aiming for profitability without raising again. Making the right decisions required modeling “if this, then that” scenarios: how aggressively to invest in scaling if they hit the high end of forecasts, or what the path to cash-flow positive looks like under different conditions. In Excel, planning at this level of sophistication with unreliable data “just wouldn’t have been viable,” since they couldn’t wait weeks for an answer.

Now, with 3 years built out in Runway, Alex can see 18 months ahead: how much he’d have to spend, and where the tripwires need to be set. The company is threading a needle, but they’re doing it with clear visibility. Leadership is aligned around scenarios they can actually model and believe in.

One of the most unexpected outcomes was that Runway replaced the BI layer AwardSpring didn’t have. Before, KPI tracking was built in spreadsheets after the fact, with no connection to the forecast. Core SaaS metrics like CAC to LTV, customer payback periods, net revenue retention by cohort, and magic number were calculated manually on a lookback-only basis.

Now, every Monday, senior leadership starts their weekly meeting with Runway’s KPI dashboard. What makes it different is that those metrics are tied directly to the forecast. So if they ramp up sales hiring next year with a 90-day ramp period, they can immediately see how that impacts magic number 12 months from now. Alex can also compare snapshots instantly—12 months ago, 24 months ago, year-to-date versus last quarter—things that were “laborious to go and do in Excel.”

To get in Excel what he has now in Runway, Alex would’ve probably had to hire a dedicated VP of Finance. For a lean, bootstrapped company trying to reach profitability without raising again, that wasn’t an option.

So he invested 3 months of his own time learning the platform. With Runway’s CX team showing him how to think through modeling logic, Alex reached VP Finance-level planning capabilities without touching payroll.

Alex wanted to invest in an FP&A platform that wouldn’t need replacing every year, even if it meant a heavier upfront investment.

What made that bet work was Stan, Runway’s CX manager. Alex works odd hours (early mornings, late nights), so traditional synchronous onboarding wouldn’t have worked. Instead, he and Stan shared Loom videos back and forth via Slack. It was this collaborative problem-solving that got Alex to self-sufficiency in about 90 days.

Alex says it’s time to move beyond spreadsheets when:

1. Your team is spending more time checking numbers than using them: If you’re constantly going on expeditions because ‘ARR went up by X, but sales was Y and retention was Z’ and it doesn’t square, and you’re digging in to figure out where the delta is, you don’t have confidence in your source of truth.
2. Your FP&A process is blocking strategic decisions: If you’re asking whether a potential sales strategy would impact the business and how, and the answer is that your FP&A process is going to get in the way of answering that question, then it’s time to make the investment.

Alex believes AwardSpring is probably on the smaller end of Runway’s typical customer base in terms of revenue and complexity, but he can’t imagine “being in the driver’s seat of a business in the future without this kind of control and confidence.”