The Challenge

When Claudia Burns joined Concordia Theological Seminary as CFO, she walked into a finance operation still running on paper. Department heads printed Excel sheets, wrote in their budget projections by hand, and sent them back. There was no version control, no real-time visibility, and no easy way to consolidate 40 departments' worth of numbers without a significant manual effort.

"Before using Martus, everything was done via Excel. People printed an Excel sheet, then they documented by hand, everything they thought was going to be their budget. All they knew was the totals from the prior year, or two or three years," Burns said.

The prep work alone was exhausting. "Before we started using Martus, we were manually doing things in Excel, which took at least a week, going back and forth with the department heads, changing numbers, fixing errors in macros and calculations, etc. It took me a lot of time just for the data entry, between the prep and the printing of the reports and putting all the numbers together for the prior three years. I think it would it took me about three weeks to get everything ready to be sent out to the department managers. It was very frustrating."

From start to finish, Burns estimates the old process consumed roughly two months. "I would say the entire process with this whole Excel budgeting process was probably a couple of months, from going back and forth with stakeholders, to putting everything together."

Why Martus

When Burns began looking for a budgeting solution, she had a clear filter: she didn't want complexity for its own sake. Martus fit that criteria. "When I started looking into Martus, I found that the level of customization features was just enough for me — useful but not super complex. Martus looked very intuitive to use."

The Solution

Burns took a deliberate, phased approach to rolling out Martus at CTSFW — prioritizing adoption and comfort over speed. Rather than flipping a switch, she introduced the platform over three years, building staff confidence at each stage.

• Year one: Burns learned the platform herself, running parallel testing while still collecting Excel submissions from department heads. The integration with Sage Intacct, CTSFW's general ledger system, allowed her to bring in real data from the start — a detail she credited with accelerating her own learning. "Your Martus trainers knew how many dimensions we had — making the learning process both easier and faster."
• Year two: She rolled Martus out to staff in stages, using slides built from the seminary's own data to walk department heads through the basics — enough to get comfortable, not overwhelmed.
• Year three: With the team acclimated, Burns began using Martus as the actual teaching tool for budget preparation — walking staff through how to think about budgets, gather numbers, and run reports. "They were very impressed."

What made the rollout work, Burns said, was that the software didn't impose unnecessary steps. "What I really liked most was that the Martus software didn't force you to do a lot of things that weren't adding value. It was like, put your numbers in here by month. Here's how you put your notes and documentation. If you want some specific calculations, you can do that but there's no need for added complexity with Martus."

The Results

Three years in, Concordia Theological Seminary operates with a budgeting process that looks nothing like the one Burns inherited. The manual back-and-forth is gone. The paper copies are gone. And the two-month ordeal has been replaced by a streamlined, collaborative workflow across all 40 departments.

"Using Martus has definitely saved us time and prevented many headaches and frustration," Burns said.

The support experience has also stood out. "I found that any time I have a support ticket for Martus, it's promptly answered. I get the feeling the Martus support team doesn't treat us any differently because we're big or small. I get the impression you're here for me right away. With other software I use I have to wait for an answer on the phone 40 minutes just waiting to talk to somebody in customer service."

• Cut budgeting time in half compared to the previous Excel-based process
• Eliminated a manual, multi-month budgeting cycle across 40 departments
• Moved from paper-based, siloed submissions to a centralized, cloud-based process
• Transitioned to fully paperless budgeting
• Used Martus as a platform for organization-wide financial education and culture change