Healthcare Provider Budgeting/Planning

SAP BusinessObjects Edge Solution Delivers Significant Efficiencies

When it comes to budgeting and planning, many healthcare provider organizations make do with an inefficient process that utilizes multiple versions of complex Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and requires time-consuming - and repeated - consolidation. But not North Memorial Medical Center. Not anymore.

North Memorial is 518-bed, Level I Trauma Center located in suburban Minneapolis. Like most providers, North Memorial’s budgeting process covers a large number of departments and cost/revenue centers - more than 300. And to create the plan, the healthcare center utilized a gigantic spreadsheet, an Access database and e-mail distribution.

The spreadsheet was so big, it required nine minutes to perform its basic calculations. Even worse, the file contained all the data for all the cost centers in the North Memorial system. 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 parts (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 the calculations had to be re-done with each step.

All this complication resulted in a budgeting and planning process that took nine months to complete. Or, to put it another way, North Memorial financial managers began working on the next fiscal year budget just three months after completing the previous year's.

Enable Managers to Spend More Time Doing Analysis, Less on Busywork

North Memorial selected Dunn Solutions Group to provide a better, smarter solution, one that simplified the process, most important, eliminated the complex spreadsheet, the multiple parts and e-mail distribution. And Dunn Solutions Group built a customized solution utilizing SAP BusinessObjects Budgeting, Planning and Consolidation (BPC).

Once they installed, configured and optimized BPC for North Memorial’s 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. And in just a few weeks time, the huge spreadsheet, the multi-part approach and the complex, time-consuming and error prone manual process were eliminated.

Now, instead of wasting time entering data into spreadsheets, doing complex (and repeated) consolidations and administering complicated distribution, North Memorial’s financial managers can do analysis and other work that adds value to the organization. This significant gain in efficiency will enable North Memorial to cut costs, plan better and manage costs more intelligently.