Case Study: Alcoa speeds up demand planning and improves control of capital with Workday Adaptive Planning

Alcoa speeds up demand planning and improves control of capital

Alcoa, a Pittsburgh‑based leader in bauxite and aluminum production with 14,000 employees and $13.1B in revenue, needed to better connect and balance sales and customer demand with production capacity. Their legacy planning process relied on spreadsheets and couldn’t meet aggregation or scenario‑planning needs, slowing decision‑making and limiting visibility into inventory and working capital.

After evaluating vendors and running a proof of concept, Alcoa chose Workday Adaptive Planning for its customizability, faster deployment, and lower TCO. Adaptive Planning created a single source of truth for production, sales, inventory, AR/AP and forecasts, enabling faster what‑if scenario analysis and tighter working capital control — cutting planning/reporting cycles by 50%, reducing new‑scenario cycle time from 4 days to 1.5 days, improving demand‑planning efficiency 4x, and halving processing time.

Alcoa