Case Study: Hortonworks achieves marketing–finance alignment and real‑time budget and ROI visibility with Allocadia

How Marketing and Finance Found Common Ground at Hortonworks

Hortonworks, a fast-growing data software company, struggled with fragmented marketing planning and poor Finance‑Marketing alignment: budget transfers by “handshake,” proliferating spreadsheets, no visibility into actual spend, and no way to measure marketing ROI. The C‑suite demanded accountability, and Finance sought to be a collaborative partner rather than a watchdog to help marketing prove its impact.

They deployed Allocadia — a cloud planning and budgeting tool integrated with Salesforce, Marketo, and Netsuite — and drove adoption by addressing marketer concerns and demonstrating value. The result: daily use across marketing for planning and spend tracking, real‑time visibility into budget vs. actual, automated PO/invoice mapping, faster performance insight (allowing mid‑quarter course corrections) and clearer ROI reporting that strengthened cross‑functional decision making.

Hortonworks

Carey Rutigliano

Director, FP&A