A leading department of the federal government in the fight against terrorism - through changing the perception of America abroad; this department had operations in Middle East, Africa and the Indian subcontinent. The challenge was, during a period of scarce funding being able to prove the effectiveness of its mission through robust strategic and operational planning.
The department underwent a strategic planning process. Goals, measurements and initiatives were determined. The activities carried out in the field where accurately evaluated using activity-based costing principles, and a performance-based budget by program. A budgeting and planning tool was implemented that enabled the department to carry out strategic planning as well as performance evaluation from within the same platform.
The department was able to clearly and objectively illustrate to congress the impact of its mission. Using various what-if scenarios, they could demonstrate the degree to which outcomes could be improved with various levels of funding. Consequently, they not only retained their appropriation, but actually had it increased.
A leading provider of Medicare healthcare had become overwhelmed with managing the scores of Excel spreadsheets required to manage their budgeting process. They had issues with user inaccuracies, management of the process itself; and real difficulty trying to report off the data gathered.
Being a people's business, the biggest driver was personnel planning. The new system allowed planning by individual employee and the employee-driven assumptions used to drive key line items in the Income Statement. Thereafter, users were able to enter other budgeting items online regardless of their location. Departmental budgets were then created and instantly made available to the management team.
The budget cycle was reduced from several months to a few weeks. The Director of Finance who was responsible for the budgeting process was now able to have a more reliable, accurate and manageable process. It now became feasible to undertake real-time scenario-based and what-if analysis that enabled the senior management team make informed decisions rapidly
An educational non-profit with a mission of supporting underserved local communities, this organization had specific issues around their budgeting process including: restricted and unrestricted funds, budgeting by program, personnel planning and cash flow forecasting.
As cost was an issue a web-based, subscription software solution was implemented. Implementation was completed in a matter of weeks and comprised an integrated solution comprising personnel, capital, revenue, expense and cash flow planning. Spreadsheets were no longer sent around the organization; instead the difficult, manual process of collection, verification and consolidation was automated; and replaced by a system that allowed all users to provide their information independent of the budgeting and IT departments, thereby allowing these departments to concentrate on more value adding activities.
The cumbersome Excel-based budgeting process was replaced by a solution which not only drastically reduced the budgeting cycle, but significantly increased collaboration amongst the key players associated with the budgeting process.
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