Redesigning Budget Process For New Tool Implementation & Process Enhancement
The Situation
A rapidly growing and acquisitive $3.5B hospital system embarked on a complete overhaul of all their financial systems, including a new budget & forecasting tool, and needed to revamp their current budget processes to ensure the adoption and success of the implementation. The planning process was long, disconnected, and required many iterations to achieve leadership targets for the annual operating plan. Accordion was tasked with assessing the existing budget processes, identifying and prioritizing opportunities for enhancement, and designing an optimized and fully integrated planning process leveraging CPM technology.
Services
Budgeting & Forecasting Optimization
FP&A Best Practices Implementation
Budgeting & Forecasting Solution Implementation
Budget / Forecast Process Assessment & Redesign
The Execution
- Worked closely with the Company’s FP&A, Operational Finance, IT, and Operations teams to develop a comprehensive understanding of the current state budget process.
- Identified, analyzed, and prioritized the biggest pain points and enhancement opportunities.
- Met with senior leadership and management across functions to align on key metric and data definitions.
- Conducted on-site workshops with the finance team to establish the groundwork for the future process.
- Post-workshop, conducted targeted deep dive design sessions across all functional areas within the organization.
- Reviewed and aligned with management on key metrics, drivers, methodologies and data sources.
- Provided recommendations on a revamped set of roles & responsibilities for the budget process to increase efficiency, accountability and visibility.
- Developed comprehensive budget process, technical design documentation and phase 1 project plan for the upcoming budget cycle, as well as a long-term enhancement plan to achieve target state.
- Leveraged phased approach to prioritize near-term utilization and training, and path to future state “lights-out” integrations synched with other system deployments.
- Assisted the FP&A team in communication and change management for the organization.
The Results
Accordion created a comprehensive budget process and technical design roadmap to enable a more efficient and scalable end-to-end process utilizing CPM Planning and Reporting tools. The Company was able to redefine planning based on their go-forward organizational and operational processes aligned with business drivers and visibility requirements. The Accordion team partnered with Finance and IT to detail the necessary methodologies and granular data requirements for initiating the upcoming budget cycle, as well as an enhancement plan for future cycles.