Scaling Literacy, Not Headcount: How Room to Read Modernized Finance to Empower Global Impact

The Challenge

When Workday Adaptive Planning announced it would no longer support the integration to Sage Intacct, the Room to Read finance team faced a critical need: to find a new automation solution.

While the original Intacct-to-Adaptive integration was somewhat automated, it had grown inefficient. Run times stretched to 45–60 minutes, and any error (like a missing integration in Adaptive) would cause the entire process to fail. That meant wasted time and stalled productivity.

“In addition to finding a new automation solution for the Intacct-to-Adaptive integration, we needed to focus on streamlining the other direction of integration, specifically loading our Adaptive budget into Intacct. This process was very tedious and caused significant delays due to the extensive time required for data cleansing, formatting, mapping, validation, and review cycles that involved three different teams,” said Nancy Shyer, VP of Finance at Room to Read.

For Room to Read, their process involved multiple teams and manual steps like exporting data, cleaning, and reformatting it, manually mapping fields, and validating each file before uploading. The team relied on spreadsheets, pivot tables, and manual filtering, which introduced errors, stress, and long hours during budgeting season. With 22 entities to manage, each requiring separate files in local currency and USD, errors were common, and time delays were inevitable. Two full load cycles were needed: one in a sandbox and another in production, each taking 5–10 minutes per file. Total time to complete the integration – juggling with other year-end work - was reaching almost nine weeks of elapsed time.

In addition to addressing their integration challenges between Sage Intacct and Workday Adaptive Planning, Room to Read’s CFO has been focused on driving broader organizational improvements.

1. Transforming Systems for the Future: Committed to modernizing financial and operational systems to support long-term growth and agility.
2. Scaling Without Adding Headcount: Scale Room to Read’s impact without significantly increasing staffing levels.
3. Streamlining for Efficiency: Focused on simplifying and integrating systems to eliminate redundancies.

Room to Read aimed to be more accountable to donors and to transition to more frequent budgeting cycles; however, they did not have the resources to manage the increased workload without automation.

The Solution

Room to Read was introduced to DataBlend by Sage. 

“We read reviews and met with DataBlend’s Founder and Chief Product Officer, Ethan Carlson, who provided a customer reference for us to check. Another trusted resource, Meegan Addy from Ascend Solutions, who had supported us through two Adaptive designs, said, ‘Look no further.’”

The experience working with DataBlend exceeded expectations. DataBlend learned the organization’s data model and tailored the implementation to fit their needs. The DataBlend team hit every milestone, provided training to international users, and gave strategic guidance on a two-step rollout that ensured long-term success.

“With DataBlend, the budget integration between Adaptive and Intacct now takes just 9 days of elapsed time, a huge savings when comparted to the 9 weeks it took before – an 80% savings of staff time and cost. Errors were virtually eliminated, making the experience feel significantly more modern, efficient, and reliable. Additionally, actuals used to take over an hour to run; now, they take only seconds. With DataBlend, we are now realizing greater value from our investment in Workday Adaptive Planning.”

Results with DataBlend:

1. Efficiency: What was once a time-consuming, error-prone process is now a secure, reliable, and fast integration.
2. Time Savings: Reduced from 6–9 weeks to just 9 days — saving 33 to 54 days and cutting process time by up to 85%.
3. Agility: With budget data easily pushed into Sage Intacct, Room to Read can reallocate resources mid-year, respond to changing donor priorities, and remain financially nimble.
4. Empowerment: Actuals are now automatically integrated into Adaptive early each month, giving non-financial stakeholders self-service access to financial results. Project managers can drill down into transactions and take ownership of their budgets.
5. Scalability: By eliminating manual processes and reducing run times, the Room to Read finance team has more time to focus on strategic work.

The Conclusion

CFO Shari Freedman says it this way: 

“By having data sooner, the Finance team can now focus on insightful and timely analysis. This helps our business partners benefit more children, more quickly. As a non-profit, our ‘investment returns’ are measured in terms of how many children we can benefit from the value created. Our automation through DataBlend can result in over 400 more children benefiting each year from Room to Read programs.”

The Room to Read finance team now has the integration infrastructure it needs not just to maintain operations but to lead its organization into a more data-driven, responsive future. With DataBlend, they’ve not only solved a technical challenge, but they’ve unlocked new capacity and added resources to improve the lives of children around the world