Headcount planning and management
Budgeting and forecasting
Workforce planning and management

How Cedar turned backfills from a reflex into a decision and freed up $1.5M with TeamOhana

$1.5M+
Headcount spend surfaced and reallocated year to date
90%
Reduction in weekly Finance-to-Talent reconciliation time
Overview
Shubha Chandramouli leads the corporate FP&A team at Cedar, the healthcare fintech company whose billing platform sits between major healthcare providers and the customers they serve. At roughly 400 employees and growing, Cedar was running headcount the way most fast-scaling companies do: manually, across Rippling, Greenhouse, Jira, Pigment, and a stack of Google Sheets. Six months into the role, heading into annual planning, Shubha could see the process would not survive another growth year. Finance, Talent, and leadership were each working from a different version of the truth. The number that mattered most, the size and cost of the workforce, was the one number no one could agree on. Cedar went to market for a headcount platform and chose TeamOhana. One year in, headcount is no longer something Cedar reports on after the fact. It is something the company decides, together, in one place.
Challenges
Headcount lived across Rippling, Greenhouse, Jira, Pigment, and multiple Google Sheets, with no single source of truth.
Version control breakdowns produced six to seven conflicting versions of the headcount story before a single board deliverable.
Finance and Talent burned three to four hours every week reconciling which reqs were open, approved, or duplicated.
Backfills opened by default the moment someone left, with no forced justification.
01
The challenge
02
Our solution
03
Key workflows
04
Impact and results

When Shubha joined Cedar, headcount was tracked in a patchwork. Hiring managers filed requests in Jira. Roles, business justifications, and approvals lived in a shared Google Sheet tracker. Rippling and Greenhouse each held a piece of the picture. Pigment ran the P&L. None of it agreed.

The breaking point came early, in preparation for board meeting.

“There were at least six to seven different stories of what changed from our original headcount to where we were at that point before the board deliverable.” — Shubha Chandramouli, corporate FP&A lead, Cedar

Cedar's business moves fast, and that first year brought constant reallocation. With multiple Google Sheets and no version control, every business lead held a different version of the truth. Piecing together what had actually changed, and why, meant chasing down leaders and stitching six or seven sheets into one story.

“I still have nightmares thinking about it today.”

Pigment could not close the gap. It was built for high-level consolidation, not role-level decisions.

“We want to drill down into that headcount detail and understand the business needs and justification of each role and each hire that we're making. Pigment does not do that.”

The deeper problem was not reporting. It was control. Every departure triggered a backfill automatically.

“We were just opening up backfills anytime somebody turned over, without really thinking about the need and true justification of whether or not we should actually be backfilling.”

Personnel is the largest line on Cedar's P&L, and it was being spent on autopilot.

Our solution

Cedar evaluated multiple headcount vendors and chose TeamOhana as the single source of truth for every headcount question, from current employees to future hires to past terms. Within a year, the platform did more than consolidate data. It changed how Cedar authorizes headcount.

The clearest example is the backfill process, which Cedar rebuilt around TeamOhana. Instead of opening a req by reflex, leaders now go into the platform, look at their full org structure, and decide whether a role should be backfilled, repurposed, or absorbed by the team. Because every open req carries its own approval and viewer controls, the justification and sign-off happen inside the system, not across Slack threads, email chains, and hallway meetings.

“Leaders can go into the platform, look at their entire org structure, and say, hey, we have this capability being met on our team already. We don't actually need a backfill for this person who left, because this other person has absorbed some of what that person was doing before.”

That is the shift from a tracker to an authorization layer. The decision, the justification, and the approval now live in one governed place.

Key workflows

Backfill approval, redesigned

Every backfill now starts with a question, not a req. Leaders assess their org in TeamOhana and decide whether to refill, repurpose, or absorb the role. Approval and viewer controls sit on each req, so discussion and sign-off happen in the tool. The result is roles paused, roles repurposed, and spend redirected to where the business actually needs it.

Scenario planning as the single source of truth

Cedar built its original annual budget in TeamOhana's scenario planning, with every leader entering the business justification for every role in one place. As the year reshaped the plan, each change was captured with its rationale rather than lost across sheets.

Forecast start dates that hold up

Talent enters the realistic start date for each hire. Finance sees the original budgeted date alongside it, and the two reconcile inside the platform instead of over email. TeamOhana also suggests more accurate start dates from Cedar's own historical hiring patterns, so unrealistic early dates get caught before they distort the forecast.

An audit trail the board can trust

Every change to the headcount plan is documented with what changed and why. Preparing for a board meeting no longer means reconciling sheets and interviewing leaders. The story is already there, start of year to today.

Duplicate and ghost role prevention

With every open req visible company-wide, roles no longer get opened twice. Duplicates that used to slip through annual planning and resurface mid-year are caught before they cost anything.

Impact & results

  • $1.5M+ in headcount spend surfaced and reallocated year to date through paused roles, repurposed roles, and caught duplicates.
  • Finance-to-Talent reconciliation cut from three to four hours a week to 20 minutes or less.
  • Six to seven conflicting versions of the headcount story replaced by one audit trail.
  • Forecast accuracy materially improved by catching unrealistic start dates before they skewed the plan.
  • Duplicate reqs eliminated now that every open role is visible across the company.
  • Reconciliation and status-update conversations between Finance and Talent effectively gone.
  • Comp, equity, and salary-band budget questions resolved inside the platform instead of over email.
  • Headcount conversations shifted from tactical to strategic: the value of each hire, its timing, and its fit to company strategy.

The reconciliation math tells the operational story.

“Prior to TeamOhana, reconciling between TA and Finance was about three to four hours every single week. Now maybe twenty minutes per week, if even that.” — Shubha Chandramouli, corporate FP&A lead, Cedar

The bigger shift is what those hours now go toward.

“New conversations are now happening around the value of each individual hire, if that hire fits into our overall business strategy, the timing of each hire, if we should pull them forward or push them back. It's much more thoughtful conversations around the overall business strategy versus being purely tactical.”

Asked what would break without TeamOhana, Shubha was blunt: Cedar would slide back to opening headcount tactically every time someone leaves, without thinking through what the business actually needs. Her one-line description of the platform doubles as Cedar's new operating reality.

“Single source of truth, the one-stop shop for any and all of your headcount related questions, from current employees to terms, past and future, as well as future hires.” — Shubha Chandramouli, corporate FP&A lead, Cedar
$1.5M+
Headcount spend surfaced and reallocated year to date
90%
Reduction in weekly Finance-to-Talent reconciliation time

Curious how TeamOhana can help you? Talk to us.

Talk to us
Talk to us

Explore related Customer Stories

How Docker streamlines headcount management with TeamOhana
SeatGeek sets sights on infinite scalability with TeamOhana