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Customer perspective: Flexible budgeting at the touch of a button

March 7, 2007

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Ten years of growth and a regional distribution had left the Philadelphia Care Foundation with many data sources but little insight.

It also lacked an information infrastructure that would help them maintain a high level of client care while responding to the new regulatory environment.

The organization was facing legal and regulatory developments such as the new Social Support Act (WMO), changes to the Exceptional Medical Expenses Act (AWBZ), and the requirement to register and report more fully on care provided to clients.

These increased requirements placed pressure on the organization's government-supplied resources.

The need for more accurate budgets

"In light of these developments, we wanted to be able to budget more accurately and to move from a cost-based budget to a flexible, results-based budget," says Marcel Klieverik, Controller for the Philadelphia Care Foundation.

"The new system had to give us an up-to-date view of the costs and revenues at client and regional level, allowing us to manage our organization more efficiently and in a more focused way."

Meeting diverse demands

The new solution had to fulfil a number of requirements. It had to make use of existing sources of information, combine information in reports in any desired form, and improve cost control at the lowest levels of the organization.

"We were already acquainted with Cognos through Cognos ReportNet®. So we discussed with them the possibility of using their enterprise planning software as a solution," said Klieverik.

The results: easier budgeting and cost reporting

"Together we developed a model that allows the regional managers to easily budget and report on costs and revenues per location and per client.

A Web application gives them access to a data warehouse with information from our financial, client, personnel, and salary administration systems."

A budget calculator developed in-house by Philadelphia handles the translation of the data in the source systems into the formats required by the Cognos financial planning software. "This had to be done in a very specific way, adapted to our organization," says Klieverik.

"It is important to us, for example, that you can enter personnel costs based on number and location, and make a distinction between the different kinds of care provided."

The Cognos 8 Planning solution also allows the actual costs and revenue to be recorded and compared with the budget.

The benefits: improved performance at every level

Philadelphia has successfully completed the first budget using the new system, and the experience has been very positive.

"The new system was very well received," says Klieverik. "With Cognos, we can quickly put important and reliable information, such as expenses and revenue by client and location, in the hands of our management.

Previously, they had to fight their way through bundles of paper; now it is simply a matter of clicking through an application. This makes it possible to assign regional managers more responsibility for the results.

After all, they have the information they need to manage performance in their region."

A flexible solution

The solution also provides the flexibility Philadelphia was looking for.

"You can easily change data and immediately see the consequences for all levels of financial planning," says Klieverik. "This allows you, for example, to pass on the consequences of a government measure or work with multi-year budgets."

The Philadelphia Care Foundation also recently implemented Cognos business intelligence.

"By combining planning with business intelligence, we can now see and understand our organization's work from other points of view. We also plan to implement scorecarding to measure our performance."

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