Satellite TV Provider Saves Millions with a Custom Financial Solution

Following a divestiture from its parent company, a leading satellite television and entertainment provider initiated its journey to achieving enterprise visibility. After helping the company build a data-driven culture, they again turned to Praecipio to address a new challenge: accurately tracking software development project costs.

Our team built a custom financial architecture that matched Agile methodologies to GAAP accounting standards while also enabling both big-picture and granular visibility into the cost of work. It also provided real-time dashboards for smarter decision-making, ensured auditable accuracy, and generated opportunities for millions in tax savings.

The satellite and entertainment provider faced challenges with accurately tracking and understanding their software development costs, especially when differentiating between growth-focused initiatives and operational “keep the lights on” projects. These challenges were compounded by fixed-price contracts and the reliance on estimates and spreadsheet manipulations, leaving leadership with an unclear and inaccurate picture of how the company was spending its money. 

Like many enterprises, the organization defaulted to arbitrary percentages instead of calculating the true cost of capitalizable work. They struggled to answer crucial questions, such as, “What value does this work bring?”, “How much are we spending to run versus grow the business?”, and “Are we maximizing opportunities for financial efficiency?” 

For our client, the slow flow of data from project management systems to financial systems made timely decision-making almost impossible. While the organization had abundant data, it was scattered across siloed systems and tools, making it difficult to connect project metrics to strategic goals, labor efforts, and resource spending.

Teams spent countless hours looking for data in multiple systems, manually applying cost rules, and building reports in spreadsheets, only to deliver outdated and unreliable information by the time it reached decision-makers. Even worse, they often estimated or spread costs inconsistently across budgets, which led to inaccurate financial reporting.

The company needed a way to streamline its data across disparate systems, all while ensuring compliance with SOP 98 accounting standards. Without auditable processes, they missed valuable capitalization opportunities, and leadership didn’t have the real-time insights necessary for making precise, confident decisions. 

After helping the satellite and entertainment provider build a strong data foundation post-divestiture, they partnered with Praecipio again to evolve their fragmented financial processes into a cohesive system that provides accurate cost visibility and supports data-driven decisions. 

Praecipio built a custom financial architecture centered around Jira and Jira Align, taking a layered, multi-step approach to ensure data consistency, reduce waste, and, most importantly, help our client understand where their money was going. 

1. System Integration and Automation 

   The first step involved unifying the client’s data entry and storage across platforms like Jira, Tempo, Jira Align, and Workday. By creating a shared "language" for project data, we established a common thread that connected all tools and ensured financial data was consistent and auditable.
   
   

   Next, we automated data capture and aggregation from these systems into a centralized database, eliminating the need for manual input and ensuring accurate, reliable reports.

2. Dashboards and Real-Time Data 

   To simplify financial oversight, Praecipio connected the aggregated data with a PowerBI tool to create dashboards that present real-time project costs. Previously, DirecTV had to wait a month for financial data from error-prone spreadsheets to make its way through cost accounting systems. Now, executives can instantly and easily access real-time metrics such as labor hours and financial impact per initiative. 

   Automating system connections has also allowed finance teams to audit and validate data earlier in the process, enabling greater confidence in how spending is measured against business outcomes.

3. Automating Cost Rules 

   Previously, finance teams spent weeks manually applying cost rules through unreliable calculations or internal expertise. Instead of a labor-intensive workflow that delayed decision-making, automating cost rules enabled real-time insights into accurate project costs. Reports now provide daily visualizations, tracing data from early estimates to forecasts and actuals, which gives leadership a clear and actionable view of financial impact.
   
   Praecipio also introduced an auditable accounting matrix based on SOP 98 guidelines and the Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe). This matrix ties work definitions like roles, phases, and tasks directly to our client's project data and automatically determines whether work is a capitalizable or operational expenditure. 

   Automating cost rules has also brought transparency and defensibility to our client’s financial data, strengthening compliance and ensuring audit readiness with precise, documented calculations. Enhanced visibility into when initiatives transition from OpEx to CapEx has allowed our client to reduce over-expensed projects and identify cost savings that they can immediately reinvest into innovation initiatives.
   
   This newfound financial clarity also helped tackle common challenges with implementing SAFe, aligning project management with financial systems to restart delayed initiatives and deliver more value.

    
4. Integration with Financial Systems 

   Finally, Praecipio connected all aggregated data to Oracle’s General Ledger, creating a smooth flow of financial information throughout the organization, along with the delivery of precise CapEx and Opex reporting. Automating data transfer ensured financial records were defensible, audit-ready, and aligned with tax regulations. 

   This step also closed the cost feedback loop, offering leadership accurate data to refine financial planning. Over time, this will allow our client to not only understand the financial impact of decisions at the project level but to use these insights to fund future growth initiatives. 

By automating processes that previously required thousands of hours of manual labor, Praecipio delivered a solution that not only replaced inaccurate spreadsheets but also ensured data accuracy and audit readiness. Other key outcomes included:

• Accurate Cost Visibility: Our client now has real-time insights into project costs, replacing guesswork with precise, auditable numbers. Leadership has both big-picture and granular visibility into the cost of initiatives in progress, enabling smarter decisions about budget reallocations and timely course corrections. This has also helped eliminate issues like duplicate vendor charges, budget manipulation, and labor leakage. 
• Operational Efficiency: The satellite provider eliminated 8000+ hours per month in manual spreadsheet reporting thanks to automated system connections, cost calculations, and data aggregation. 
• Millions in Tax Savings: With accurate CapEx tracking, our client has seen dramatic improvements in capitalizable cost calculations. They were able to claim a significant amount of additional capitalizable work in one month alone, which translated to millions in potential tax savings.
• Improved Resource Allocation: Our client uncovered disproportionate spending on “keep the lights on” (KTLO) activities versus growth initiatives, identifying budget overruns of up to 75%. This information has allowed them to eliminate orphan projects and reallocate resources to keep higher impact initiatives on track, ensuring every dollar supports growth or running the business. 

This engagement wasn’t just a win for the satellite and entertainment provider; it’s a win for all enterprise organizations wanting to streamline financial processes, seize revenue opportunities, and stay competitive in a fast-moving economic landscape.