The challenge: four touch points before anyone talks strategy
Walter Rockhill has been with Enpro for close to nine years. He started in global consolidation, where he was corporate administrator of the company's capex tool at the time, then spent a few years in corporate development. For the last five years he has led FP&A for Garlock. Since Garlock handles the highest volume of capex projects in Enpro, and Walter knew what a better process could look like, he was asked to sponsor the search for a new tool.
The need came suddenly. Enpro's previous capex software provider felt the tool was not being fully used and decided not to continue the relationship.
“We almost got fired from that tool, and then we were kind of left scrambling.”
Walter Rockhill
Director FP&A, Enpro
Enpro moved to a basic approval tool as a temporary fix. It handled yes or no approvals and little else. Reporting was limited to exporting four or five fields, such as project name and approval date, and business cases lived in an offline Excel template.
Outside the approval step, project data was spread across teams and formats. At Palmyra, Enpro's largest site, the accounting team runs a construction-in-progress file. Operations track the same projects in a separate Smartsheet file. FP&A then moves that data into a Garlock template, and from there into an Enpro template.
“There's four systems, they're not even all Excel. Four touch points of data. And since we're touching the data so much, we lose the time to really talk about the projects as much as we'd like and talk about the strategy.”
Walter Rockhill
Director FP&A, Enpro
Choosing a partner that understands complexity
After losing a vendor, Enpro looked for more than features. Enpro is a matrix organisation with many sites, and change sometimes moves slower than even the team would like.
“We were looking for somebody that would partner with us but be patient with us and understand that we do have a lot of complexity.”
Walter also wanted a partner that would push when needed and help Enpro picture what the future could look like. He saw that in a recent product vision session with Weissr, where the conversation started from Enpro's own goals.
“I was very impressed with the way Weissr framed the conversation: is your vision matching our vision? That was not something I saw from previous partners. It was, here's what we're doing. It wasn't really, what do you want us to do. So I thought it was a refreshing conversation.”
Walter Rockhill
Director FP&A, Enpro
The first phase had a deliberately narrow goal: replace the interim approval tool within a short time frame. Walter sponsored the project.
Results: consistency, visibility and scalability
Enpro now runs its capex requests in Weissr Capex Management, with the business case template built into the platform. Every team evaluates investments on the same basis, which is what Weissr calls Decision Confidence: clear assumptions, structured approvals and one consistent way of working.
- One format for every request. The offline Excel template is gone. The move took some change management, since people felt they had more freedom in a spreadsheet, but Walter finds the centralised format very helpful.
- Structured fields that guide the business case. The old tool had one open text box. Now separate fields and categories ask for each topic Enpro wants covered, such as alternatives considered.
- Easier for occasional users. An engineer who submits one project every three years no longer has to ask FP&A what to include or look up the policy.
“Before, it was just one box. But we want you to talk about these eight things. Now we have eight boxes.”
“Consistency, I think, would be the biggest word I'd use in how it's made it easier for me as a reporter.”
Walter Rockhill
Director FP&A, Enpro
Walter sums up the gains as consistency, visibility and scalability. He is open that Enpro is not yet using the platform to its full capability, and sees that as work on Enpro's side.
“We're not where we want to be, and that's an us thing, I think, more than a Weissr thing. But it's already definitely had some wins.”
Asked to describe the biggest difference in one sentence, Walter said:
“A simplified, unified platform that sets us up to accomplish where we want to go with capital management.”
Walter Rockhill
Director FP&A, Enpro
Looking ahead: from managing data to strategic decisions
The next step is centralising data and reporting, which Walter calls the low-hanging fruit. In the target state, every idea and project sits in Weissr, and Enpro, Garlock and each site can run consistent reports at their own level from the same data. That is Strategic Clarity in practice: one place where reliable capex data becomes insight at every level of the organisation.
Connecting ERP actuals is part of the ideal state. With at least 12, and possibly up to 15, ERP systems across Enpro, the team is approaching it with care.
“We're cautious. We're not skeptical. We know that it's possible. It's just going to be complicated.”
Enpro has also hired a new team member who led the capex process at a Fortune 500 company, and who will lead the capex roadmap going forward. Capex Strategy, Weissr's module for modelling investments across the portfolio, is expected to be on that roadmap, with timing still open. It is the route to Capital Efficiency: weighing competing uses of capital across the organisation instead of project by project.
Walter sees value in Weissr's vision of the platform as the brain of the operation. Today, several people handle the same project data by hand. If Weissr takes over more of that synthesis, it would “let us be more of the strategic operators.”
He is clear that getting there starts with Enpro's own process and data: getting ideas into the system consistently, with enough data behind them to be reportable and understood.
“How do you let the system help you versus just check the box?”
“I think it has what we need. We just need to work on us a little bit. The tool is only as good as the data.”
Walter Rockhill
Director FP&A, Enpro