Black Diamond Podcast

S1E10 | How a CFO Transformed Her Equipment Rental Business

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A real-world case study in moving from 16 Excel templates to sophisticated capital asset planning - and why the detailed approach delivered surprising accuracy

Nicole Cunningham, CFO of Jack Doheny Company (JDC) shares one of the most compelling implementation stories you'll hear. This isn't a theoretical discussion - it's a finance leader being brutally honest about what actually works, what doesn't, and how to avoid the traps that sink most projects.

The Perfect Storm: New CFO, New ERP, and COVID

Nicole's story begins with impeccable timing - she joined JDC in March 2020, right as they were implementing a new ERP and COVID hit. The new ERP was great for operations but terrible for reporting, leaving the finance team scrambling with dashboards that couldn't deliver the insights they needed for their rental equipment business.

The Excel template nightmare:

  • 16 different branch locations, each requiring custom templates
  • Manual updates once (then twice) per year consuming massive amounts of time
  • A four-person finance team drowning in data compilation instead of analysis
  • Planning at equipment type level rather than individual assets, leading to "law of averages" inaccuracy
    • The Controversial Decision: Asset-Level Planning

    Here's where the story gets interesting. Nicole had detailed Excel models and was comfortable planning at a higher level - 25 equipment types covering 1,000+ rental assets. But the BDA team (Greg and Ashwin) pushed for something that made her "really nervous": asset-level capital planning.

    Why this was terrifying:

    • Individual asset decisions: what to buy, sell, keep
    • Utilization planning at the asset level
    • Depreciation schedules that actually matched reality instead of averages
    • Balance sheet implications that seemed overwhelming

      • Why it worked:

      • The "law of averages" was killing forecast accuracy
      • Different product lines had vastly different lifecycles (2-4 years)
      • Asset-level detail enabled proper depreciation calculations
      • Balance sheet planning became automatic instead of manual nightmare
        • ...more
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