Results-Based Budgeting for a Global Foundation
Learn how Aposphere transformed financial management for a global foundation with results-based budgeting, enabling strategic resource allocation and operational efficiency.
By implementing a scalable and user-friendly budgeting solution, Aposphere empowered the foundation to align budgets with measurable outcomes and streamline consolidation across 17 countries.
The solution also enhanced decision-making by providing clear financial insights, enabling the foundation to allocate resources strategically and maintain operational efficiency.
Client Overview and Challenges
An international foundation headquartered in Switzerland, with operations spanning 17 countries, faced significant budgeting challenges. The foundation focuses on impactful global initiatives, requiring robust financial planning and management to align its goals across diverse regions.
Before the project began, the headquarters had lost oversight of their network of national offices and their budgets, making it difficult to ensure alignment and effective resource allocation. This lack of visibility led to several key issues:
- Complex Budget Alignment: Ensuring consistency and alignment between country-level budgets and the global financial strategy.
- Consolidation Issues: Manual processes for aggregating financial data were time-consuming and prone to errors.
- Lack of Results-Based Planning: Existing tools did not support linking budget allocation to measurable outcomes, limiting strategic decision-making.
Aposphere's Approach
Aposphere collaborated closely with the foundation to design and implement a comprehensive budgeting solution tailored to their global operations. The process included:
Discovery & Requirements Analysis
In the discovery phase, we conducted workshops to thoroughly understand the foundation's unique needs and challenges. This phase involved mapping existing workflows, pinpointing inefficiencies, and identifying gaps in the current budgeting process.
Key findings included a lack of standardized budgeting practices across regions, inconsistent methods for tracking expenditures, and limited visibility into how budgets aligned with the foundation's strategic objectives.
The requirements for potential solutions were deduced from a specification of processes, initial sketches of possible architectures, and other operational constraints.
Solution Selection
Together with the client, and according to the requirements matrix defined in the previous phase, we acnostically evaluated a range of tools to determine the best fit. The evaluation focused on results-based budgeting, budget alignment, and consolidation.
A combination of IBM Planning Analytics and Aposphere Insight was evaluated being the most effective approach. IBM Planning Analytics was selected for its scalability and performance in managing the financial aspects, while Aposphere Insight provided strategic capabilities to ensure alignment with the foundation's broader goals.
This phase also included selecting a vendor and implementation partner, assessing licensing models, and establishing service level agreements (SLAs).
System Implementation
The implementation phase focused on configuring the selected tools — IBM Planning Analytics and Aposphere Insight — to enable results-based budgeting and strategic alignment.
This involved setting up functionality to allocate funds based on measurable outcomes, designing workflows to align budgets and consolidate data seamlessly across all regions, and ensuring smooth integration between the financial and strategic components.
Additionally, we provided comprehensive training sessions and detailed documentation to empower the foundation's teams and facilitate effective adoption of the solution.
Operation & Support
In the operational support phase, we ensured the system remained stable while performing regular updates and extensions to meet evolving requirements.
Aposphere acted as the single point of contact for the foundation, streamlining communication and providing seamless support.
Together with the customer, we periodically evaluated and realized opportunities for enhancements, maximizing its effectiveness and long-term value.
The Solution
To address the foundation's financial and strategic management challenges, we implemented a robust, integrated system that combines financial planning, grant management, and strategic alignment. The solution is designed to provide transparency, improve decision-making, and ensure seamless data flow between financial and operational processes.
Architecture
Our solution implements the peration layer in a typical multi-layer technology stack, playing a pivotal role in the seamless functioning of the ecosystem.
The base layer consists of different specific tools. Our client was already a Salesforce customer/donor relationship management (CRM/DRM) system. Furthermore, a tailored integration with the sponsor company's SAP entreprise resource planning (ERP) system was required. Finally, we developed a semi-automated and fully integrated invoices processing module.
The operation layer is structured into two core modules:
- Resource Management Module: Implemented in IBM Planning Analytics, this module encompasses Grant Management, Financial Planning & Controlling, and associated financial processes. It is seamlessly integrated with the Saleforce CRM/DRM, the SAP ERP, and the invoice processing system.
- Programme Operations Module: Built on Aposphere Insight, this module extracts key financial figures from the Resource Management Module via Aposphere Insight's DataHub. These key figures are used for automated data-driven KPI evaluation within the strategy, enabling a tightly linked system that supports goal-based resource allocation and strategic planning.
Users access both modules through a web frontend. Viewing/editing data and executing workflows is authorized according to a group-based permission scheme.
Key Features
The solution is designed to address the client's challenges effectively while optimizing financial controlling and strategic alignment. Key highlights include:
Integrated Financial and Strategic Management
Financial allocations are linked directly to program goals and measurable outcomes, ensuring accountability and impact. This ensures that the grants are allocated to generate maximal impact.
Global Alignment
For the headquarter, the solution enables a unified view of budgets across 17 contries, streamlining data aggregation and consistency. For the contry offices, the tool allows in-place editing and consolidation of their individual budgets.
Scalability
The scalable and highly configurable frameworks used for the resource management and programme operations modules support the foundation's evolving operational needs and provide resiliency for unforeseen changes.
Project Results
By streamlining financial processes and integrating strategic planning, the foundation's ability to manage resources effectively across its global network is significantly enhanced.
The improved transparency, automation, and goal-based budgeting approach set a new standard for financial oversight and accountability.
Improved Efficiency
Automated workflows significantly reduce the time spent on manual budget consolidation.
Global Cohesion
Unified processes ensure alignment between regional and global financial strategies.
Enhanced Decision-Making
Results-based budgeting provide clear insights into the impact of financial allocations, enabling more strategic decisions.
This use case describes an actual customer project, however, no names are mentioned.