Headcount planning and management
Budgeting and forecasting

How Scale AI built a headcount planning engine to 10x its hiring velocity with TeamOhana

90%+
Time saved on headcount reconciliation
85%
Efficiency gain during planning cycles
Overview
Scale AI, the $29B company providing reliable AI systems to Fortune 500 enterprises and government entities, found itself in a familiar but painful position: headcount planning had outgrown the tools managing it. Kenny Tran, Head of Business Transformation at Scale AI, joined in January 2023 with a mandate to fix headcount planning before it broke the people running it. Working alongside May Lee, Head of Corporate Finance, Kenny set out to find a system that could bring Finance, HR, and Talent into a single, shared process. What followed was a two-year journey through Google Sheets, a failed vendor implementation, and eventually a partnership with TeamOhana that transformed how the entire organization plans and executes headcount.
Challenges
Headcount planning spread across multiple siloed Google Sheets
Hours spent on manual data consolidation with no unified view
No comp band automation, forcing manual lookup for every request
Hiring managers, HR VPs, and department leads had no shared visibility
01
The challenge
02
Our solution
03
Key workflows
04
Impact and results

Before TeamOhana, Scale AI's headcount planning process lived entirely in Google Sheets. May Lee, Head of Corporate Finance, managed the process across multiple access-controlled spreadsheets — one per department, carefully siloed to protect sensitive data. The work of pulling those sheets into a single consolidated view for planning fell entirely on her shoulders, and it was relentless.

"A lot of our Head of Finance’s time would be spent consolidating all this data into a consolidated view for headcount planning. It was a very painful process." — Kenny Tran, Head of Business Transformation, Scale AI

Scale AI did have Adaptive Planning in place, and on paper it could handle some headcount work. In practice, it served one audience: FP&A. Getting hiring managers, HR VPs, and department leads to log in consistently was unrealistic. The integrations weren't there either — no live Greenhouse data, no Bamboo HR sync, no way to give recruiters real-time visibility into where a req stood. Adaptive wasn't built for the cross-functional coordination headcount planning actually requires.

Kenny's team evaluated several tools and implemented one that looked promising in POC — with Greenhouse and Bamboo integrations built out and hiring managers finally given access. But when Scale AI's generative AI business exploded in mid-2023 and hiring volume jumped from a handful of people per month to 30 to 40, the tool couldn't keep up. Submitting a req became a 15-minute ordeal. Comp bands didn't populate automatically. Department leads went directly to the CFO to say they refused to use it.

"By November, we had department leads coming to our CFO saying, 'It's taking us 15 minutes to log a requisition. There's no way we're using this tool.'" — Kenny Tran, Head of Business Transformation, Scale AI

When the H2 planning cycle arrived, the tool couldn't support it either. Kenny and May ran the entire cycle back in Google Sheets. By the time that cycle closed, the decision to find a new vendor was already made.

Our solution

TeamOhana gave Scale AI what spreadsheets and their prior tool couldn't: a single place where Finance, HR, and Talent could plan, approve, and execute headcount work together. The evaluation in early 2024 came down to how well each platform could support the full planning lifecycle — not just req intake, but scenario building, approvals, recruiting execution, and Finance reconciliation in one connected workflow.

The scenario planning functionality stood out immediately.

"You can actually create and see in real time the cost impact of different scenarios. You can make swaps, you can make trades, and then all you have to do is click, merge, approve it, and it goes back into your plan." — Kenny Tran, Head of Business Transformation, Scale AI

Scale AI had buy-in from Recruiting Ops, Finance, and HRBPs before implementation began. Rather than a phased rollout, they committed to a full cutover — building custom integrations through Workato where native connections weren't available and doing whatever it took to get to a successful implementation.

The result was a system that finally served every team that touches headcount:

  • Hiring managers can submit a request in under two minutes. Job role, level, and location automatically return a comp band. The form is intuitive enough that no training is required, which matters when adoption across a large org depends on people actually using the tool.
  • HR VPs and Finance BPs can run planning scenarios with real-time cost impact, invite department leads, chiefs of staff, and executives into a shared view, and control exactly what each participant can see. When a scenario is approved, one merge converts it into the active plan.
  • Recruiters get real-time visibility into the full req pipeline. Once a req clears approvals, they receive a notification, assign a recruiter, and initiate the Greenhouse job opening directly from TeamOhana without manually recreating any data downstream.
  • HR Ops benefits from a Workato integration that fires a Slack notification when an offer is accepted, triggers the Bamboo HR record creation automatically, and syncs the record back to TeamOhana for reconciliation.

The change management approach was deliberate too. Rather than overwhelming users with a complex platform, Kenny's team focused on training and enablement materials that demonstrated how simple the tool actually was — and anchored the planning pitch around a single message: this is the one place you go to put in your job roles, levels, and locations, and everything flows from there.

Key workflows

Scenario-based planning

Before TeamOhana, biannual planning cycles meant rebuilding consolidated Google Sheets from scratch, manually collecting inputs from department leads, and spending days on reconciliation before any real planning could begin. Today, May creates a single planning scenario in TeamOhana and invites chiefs of staff, department leads, leaders, and executives. Everyone works from the same view, seeing only what their access level permits. When the plan is ready, one merge converts the scenario into the official headcount plan.

Scale AI also uses scenarios throughout the year for:

  • Incremental headcount unlocks for large project-based hiring pushes
  • Swaps and trades when teams want to up-level or down-level roles
  • Org changes modeled by HRBPs before they're submitted for approval

Backfill and incremental headcount requests

Today, 100% of Scale AI's backfills and incremental requests run through TeamOhana. When a hiring manager submits a backfill, the departing employee's data pre-populates the request form. Approvals flow through HR VPs, Finance BPs, and department leads within the platform — no email chain, no spreadsheet tracker.

"Historically they would have to go get a rec and then go and create the opening and the job manually within Greenhouse. Today that's pretty much all automated." — Kenny Tran, Head of Business Transformation, Scale AI

Approval workflows across Finance, HR, and Talent

Every req goes through a defined approval chain in TeamOhana — HR VPs, Finance BPs, and department leads all approve within the platform. Recruiting leads receive a notification once a req clears and can assign a recruiter immediately. The approval structure that previously either didn't exist or lived in email now runs automatically, with full visibility for everyone involved.

Confidential role management

Scale AI manages confidential roles through TeamOhana's access controls, maintaining 99% org-wide alignment on headcount while keeping sensitive requisitions visible only to those who need to see them.

Impact & results

From spreadsheets to a system that runs itself

With TeamOhana, Scale AI shifted from a process defined by manual consolidation and tool failures to one where Finance, HR, and Talent operate from a single source of truth. The results touched every team that touches headcount.

Significant reductions in time spent on manual FP&A tasks

Before TeamOhana, May’s role was largely defined by one task: consolidating fragmented spreadsheets into something leadership could actually use. Every planning cycle meant hours of manual data work before any real planning could begin. Today, that work doesn't exist. May runs planning strategy rather than administering spreadsheets.

The efficiency gains reflect that shift:

  • 90%+ reduction in time spent on headcount reconciliation
  • 85% efficiency gain during planning cycles
  • Planning work that once required days of consolidation now happens in a single shared scenario

Hiring managers stopped avoiding the process

With TeamOhana, req submission dropped to under two minutes. Comp bands populate automatically. The form is intuitive enough that no one needs training to use it. The result is 100% of Scale AI's backfills and incremental requests now running through TeamOhana — not because it's mandated, but because it's actually faster than the alternatives.

Finance and HR finally work from the same data

TeamOhana gave HR VPs, Finance BPs, department leads, and hiring managers a shared view of headcount — including confidential roles — with 99% org-wide alignment. Key automations that eliminated manual work include:

  • Greenhouse job openings created automatically from approved reqs
  • Bamboo HR records created through Workato on offer acceptance, synced back to TeamOhana
  • Manual Finance forecasting spreadsheet trackers eliminated entirely

183% ROI and a roadmap for what comes next

Scale AI calculated a 183% ROI from their TeamOhana implementation. But Kenny's vision for the partnership extends well beyond what's live today. The team is exploring how AI agents could assist in building planning scenarios from scratch — distributing open reqs across job levels, hiring seasonality, location, and recruiting capacity, and returning a first draft for Finance and leadership to react to. That roadmap is possible in part because of how the vendor relationship itself works.

“If I knew this tool was available when I first started four years ago, I would've said just do it right away because it'll just save you a lot of time and energy going forward.” — May Lee, Head of Corporate Finance, Scale AI
90%+
Time saved on headcount reconciliation
85%
Efficiency gain during planning cycles

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