Case Study: San Francisco Ballet achieves faster financial insights and budget agility with Workday Adaptive Planning

Modern CFO Choreographs New Level of Fiscal Understanding, Responsibility

San Francisco Ballet, an 83-year-old nonprofit and one of the largest U.S. ballet companies, faced a fiscal challenge when donation revenue fell during an economic downturn and ticket sales covered only about half of production costs. CFO Kim Carim needed to drive greater financial responsibility across departments while protecting the company’s artistic mission.

By adopting Adaptive Insights, the finance team began tracking profit and loss by individual performance, revealing profitability swings of up to $3 million and enabling faster, data-driven programming decisions. The organization shortened a month-long planning cycle to one week, gave budget managers self-service access to current financials, and gained what Carim calls a “virtual full-time employee” — improving strategic insight, flexibility, and long-term sustainability.

San Francisco Ballet

Kim Carim

CFO