Project: Business Planning & Process Consolidation
Client: Mid-Size Hospital
When it comes to budgeting and planning, many healthcare providers make do with an inefficient process that utilizes multiple versions of complex Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and requires time-consuming – and repeated – consolidation. But not with one Midwestern hospital. Not anymore.
Challenge: Manual Processes Left Room for Error
Like most providers, this hospital's budgeting process covers a large number of departments and cost/revenue centers – more than three hundred. And to create the plan, the hospital utilized a gigantic spreadsheet, Microsoft Access (for consolidations) and e-mail distribution.
The spreadsheet was so big that it required nine minutes to perform its basic calculations. Even worse, the file contained all the data for all the cost centers across the hospital network. So every manager working on the spreadsheet could see the data for every other business unit – and had to wade through it to get to their own. Also, to make the complicated spreadsheet easier to manage, it was broken into three pieces (patient volume projections, revenue, expenses). But that meant that the file had to be distributed three times. The potential for error was huge, and consolidations and calculations had to be re-done with each step.
All this complexity resulted in a budgeting and planning process that took nine months to complete. Or, to put it another way, the hospital's financial managers began working on the next fiscal year budget just three months after completing the previous year's.
Solution: Enabling Managers to Spend More Time Doing Analysis, Less on Busywork
The hospital selected Dunn Solutions Group to provide a better, smarter solution, one that simplified the process and, most important, eliminated the complex spreadsheet and multiple-part approach. To achieve that goal, Dunn Solutions Group built a customized solution utilizing SAP Business Planning & Consolidation (BPC).
Once they installed, configured and optimized BPC for their environment, Dunn Solutions Group's budgeting/planning experts located the necessary data (from Lawson and other systems), and linked it directly to BPC. Then they recreated in BPC all the business rules that formerly ran in Access against the spreadsheet data. And in just twelve weeks, the spreadsheet, multi-part approach and manual process were eliminated.
Result: Increased Efficiency Leads to Cost Savings
Now, instead of wasting time entering data into spreadsheets, doing complex (and repeated) consolidations and administering complicated distribution, their financial managers can do analysis and other work that adds value to the organization. This significant gain in efficiency will offer this hospital the opportunity to cut expenses, plan better and manage costs more intelligently.
