Case study highlights
- Improved and modernised budgeting processes
- Gained efficiency through enhanced reporting
- Enabled confidence in decision-making using accurate real-time data
The Challenge
Leading national not-for-profit Spinal Life Australia supports people living with spinal cord damage or other physical disabilities to live an accessible, equitable and empowered life. The organisation provides services including in-home care, allied health and advocacy.
With several locations and service lines across Australia, Spinal Life’s previous budgeting system consisted of multiple manual Excel spreadsheets that had to be amalgamated together to make sense, something Spinal Life Australia’s Chief Commercial Officer, Natalie von Snarski, says made preparing the annual budget a time-consuming and resource-intensive process.
“We had upwards of a hundred Excel spreadsheets just to create one budget. It was pretty common for there to be data entry and formatting errors which led to a lack of confidence in our budget due to the possibility of inaccuracies because of these errors,” von Snarski said.
Spinal Life required an integrated and systemised process to streamline and manage their budgeting to gain confidence in reporting.
The Solution
Spinal Life Australia recognised that to gain accurate insight into their budgeting and make effective forecasting and planning decisions, they would need to transform processes.
The organisation opted for TechnologyOne’s fully integrated OneCare solution to consolidate their IT stack, reduce support load and expenditure on multiple systems and streamline operations. Included in the OneCare solution is the Corporate Performance Management (CPM) business capability.
Corporate Performance Management benefits organisations by enabling access to real-time business analytics, improving strategic and operational planning processes and simplifying budgeting and forecasting.
“We reached out to TechnologyOne and got the Enterprise Budgeting module of Corporate Performance Management implemented, which meant we were able to eliminate the manual errors we previously had, and this allowed us to have a lot more confidence in the results of our budget and forecasting process,” said von Snarski.
“At the time that we were implementing this project, we were also transitioning from a grant-based funding model to a commercial services model with the NDIS. In that environment you really have to be able to identify the margin per hour of your services to make sure that you can continue to stay in business.
“It’s helped to drive a more commercially aware culture within the organisation, and we can ensure our margins are appropriate when we are bidding for new areas of work.”
Enterprise Budgeting gave us confidence that when we input the appropriate information and do the calculations that the end budget result is correct and detailed enough that we can make the right business decisions
The Outcome
By adding Corporate Performance Management, including Enterprise Budgeting, to their suite of TechnologyOne products, Spinal Life Australia have been able to create and collaborate on budgets with one easy-to-use tool and have simplified their budgeting processes.
“We now have a more streamlined process and, importantly, one where we have confidence in the data. It’s gone from taking six weeks to prepare a budget to two and we have been able to put that time toward delivering on other goals,” said Natalie von Snarski, Chief Commercial Officer, Spinal Life Australia.
Enterprise Budgeting has increased the productivity and efficiency of Spinal Life Australia’s team and has given executives more control and transparency to support quick and informed decisions.
“We wanted to help our executive managers make appropriate commercial decisions within a timely manner. With Enterprise Budgeting we were able to do that. We don’t have to worry about all sorts of Excel spreadsheets and modelling all sorts of data. We can do it in the system and get the answers quickly and efficiently and know that we can rely on that information,” said von Snarski.
Spinal Life Australia can now track budgets, actuals and forecasts, and can proactively manage current and future costs in line with business operations.
“Our executive managers are comfortable accessing the data on a month-to-month basis to see how they're tracking, and we can do forecasting now, which we didn't do before because of the time it would take to do it,” said von Snarski.
Reporting has been made simple with information across multiple locations and services able to be viewed in a singular system. Spinal Life Australia are now also able to look to the future with Enterprise Budgeting enabling them to combine analysis of historical data with future goals.
“Enterprise budgeting has been a really beneficial tool for the organisation. We better understand the financial drivers of our business, and to get down to the nitty gritty, to make better decisions for our staff and clients.”
Spotlight on Enterprise Budgeting
TechnologyOne’s Corporate Performance Management is a simple tool to help deliver a complete approach to managing budgeting, forecasting, performance planning, business analytics and more.
Within Corporate Performance Management is the Enterprise Budgeting module, which enables organisations to deliver accurate forecasts by measuring and monitoring performance, reporting and analysing trends, and combining analysis of historical data with future goals.
Our Enterprise Budgeting capabilities can increase team productivity and efficiency with automated approval processes and give organisations more control and transparency to support quick and informed decisions. It also offers tracking of budgets, actuals and forecasts, and assists in proactively managing current and future costs in line with business operations.
About Spinal Life Australia
Spinal Life Australia supports people with spinal cord damage and other physical disabilities to live an accessible, equitable and empowered life.
Resources
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