How Disney Achieved Accurate and Efficient Cash Flow Forecasting with PMWEB

In an organization as complex and high-velocity as Disney, successful cash flow forecasting means more than accurate numbers—it means enabling confident, timely decisions across dozens of teams and hundreds of projects. With capital activity spanning theme parks, film production, and international development, even small delays or errors in forecasting can disrupt spend timing, vendor payments, and executive planning.

Disney, a global entertainment powerhouse, manages hundreds of high-value projects across film, television, parks, and merchandise. Despite its operational scale, Disney's cash flow forecasting process was previously reliant on disconnected spreadsheets, resulting in slow reporting, inaccuracies, and high support overhead. 

In search of a unified and scalable solution, Disney partnered with PMWEB to implement an integrated forecasting and reporting platform, thereby improving visibility, control, and standardization.

With PMWEB, Disney was able to centralize its financial data, automate reporting, and gain real-time insights into cash flow. The solution enabled Disney’s teams to work more efficiently and make faster, more informed decisions regarding project budgets, costs, and vendor management.

Expected Outcomes

Disney's finance and project management teams sought a way to enhance the accuracy and efficiency of their cash flow forecasting. They needed a solution that could:

• Generate reports quickly, even with high volumes of data.
• Integrate historical and live data for more accurate forecasts.
• Improve cross-functional visibility across finance and project controls.
• Enhance the user experience for project managers, enabling them to make informed decisions more quickly.

Objectives

• Improve reporting speed: Reports were taking too long to load or even timing out. Disney needed faster and more reliable cash flow reports.
• Increase accuracy: With multiple teams and systems involved, manual processes led to errors and inconsistencies in data. Disney wanted a solution that would minimize human error.
• Streamline processes: Managing multiple vendors, cost codes, and sub-projects across several projects was overly complex and slow. The goal was to simplify this process and improve decision-making.

There were a lot of disconnects that were happening... we were missing our cash flows, and we said there has to be a better way to do this.
- Allison McCoy, Manager of Controls & Planning

Solution & Implementation

With over 1,000 active projects across 45 square miles of property, Disney’s Facility Asset Management (FAM) team needed a financial planning process that matched the scale, speed, and complexity of their operations.

PMWEB emerged as the solution of choice, not simply as a system of record, but as a flexible platform capable of adapting to Disney’s unique blend of engineering precision, guest experience expectations, and operational intensity.

PMWEB helped Disney solve these challenges by offering the following capabilities:

• Centralized data warehousing: PMWEB's data warehousing feature allowed Disney to centralize financial data from various sources (including SAP and other internal systems), creating a unified source of truth. This meant that project managers and finance teams could access consistent, up-to-date financial data at any time, reducing reliance on spreadsheets.
• Custom reporting capabilities: PMWEB’s SSRS (SQL Server Reporting Services) integration allowed Disney to create customized, dynamic reports that could be tailored to meet specific needs across departments. With real-time data pulled from all relevant sources, the reports are always current and accurate.
• Real-time forecasting: The integration of live data with historical trends gave Disney’s project managers the ability to forecast cash flow more accurately, allowing them to plan for contingencies and adjust project budgets in real-time.
• Error-checking and validation: PMWEB’s automated workflows included built-in checks and balances to detect errors as data was entered. This eliminated the risk of mistakes that often happened in the manual data entry process, ensuring a higher level of financial accuracy.
• Vendor management integration: By linking PMWEB’s vendor management tools with the forecasting module, Disney could now track vendor costs and sub-project expenses in real time, giving them complete visibility over their spending across all projects.

Implementation Process

The implementation of PMWEB was carried out in a phased approach, ensuring a smooth transition for Disney’s teams:

Phase 1 - Pilot testing

Disney tested PMWEB on select projects to evaluate its capabilities and identify areas for improvement, such as custom reporting and ERP integration.

Phase 2 - Training & adoption

After adjustments, they conducted tailored training for project managers and finance teams to ensure smooth adoption.

Phase 3 - Go live & continuous support

PMWEB went live, with ongoing support and additional training provided to resolve issues and optimize use.

Collaboration

Disney’s success with PMWEB was driven by a strong partnership between the Facility Asset Management team, PMWEB’s implementation experts, and cross-functional collaborators from finance, construction, and operations. From the beginning, Disney approached the rollout not as a technical deployment, but as an opportunity to improve the way teams work together. Collaboration amongst stakeholders included:

• Co-developing rulesets and error codes
  
• Aligning reporting baselines across fiscal periods
  
• Iterative testing with both advanced and new users to refine the experience.
  
• Ongoing enhancements based on frontline feedback.

Results

Disney’s transformation of project cash flow forecasting delivered measurable improvements in speed, accuracy, and adoption across the organization. By moving from disconnected Excel workflows to a fully integrated, data warehouse–powered solution within PMWEB, Disney gained real-time insight, reduced delays, and improved coordination across teams.

Key results include:

• Report load times reduced from multiple minutes or frequent timeouts to under 15 seconds for 99% of users.
• Real-time forecast visibility empowered project managers and finance teams to work from a shared source of truth.
• Support ticket volume decreased significantly due to built-in error validation, dynamic guidance, and UI simplification.
• Forecast quality improved through automated workflows, embedded variance comments, and master branch rules that enforced data accuracy.
• Baseline enforcement and variance tracking became standard across all project phases, increasing transparency and audit readiness.

Benefits

The implementation of PMWEB replaced manual, spreadsheet-based processes with a centralized and automated system that streamlined forecasting, reporting, and decision-making.

Key benefits achieved:

• Improved cross-functional collaboration through standardized logic and clearly defined fiscal baselines.
• Reduction in manual errors and support requests thanks to embedded error codes and real-time validation checks.
• Faster, more flexible reporting that enabled dynamic analysis of trends, variances, and performance indicators across departments. 
• Stronger governance and accountability with embedded workflows, audit trails, and reporting logic. 

Just being on our help desk side, this has greatly reduced the amount of tickets we get with questions because they’re learning to see what is going on themselves without relying on us.
- Allison McCoy, Manager of Controls & Planning