Helping at-risk children, families and seniors through innovative and responsive community programs is the core of the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation. To make every dollar count, Wilder turned to Microsoft Business Intelligence technologies to create an enterprise-wide planning and budgeting solution. Now, management has fast access to financial data which has not only reduced planning efforts by 50 percent, it enables them to make more informed strategic decisions about how to best serve the community for years to come.
Business Needs
For more than 100 years, the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation has played an essential role in the social welfare of residents in the greater St. Paul area. Each year it serves and trains thousands of people in need. Wilder’s progressive and inclusive nature—assisting the poor, sick, aged, regardless of nationality, sex, color, religion–has made the nonprofit a beacon of the community.
Recent economic uncertainty and decreased revenues resulted in fewer resources for Wilder to run critical community programs and services. To preserve the Wilder endowment fund for forthcoming generations, the nonprofit needed to refine its programs and operations to align for the future.
Understanding how employee costs impact the bottom line was among the top priorities. Wilder’s granular budgeting process incorporates and analyzes all aspects of compensation costs–from salary, to capital expenses, health and disability insurance, 401k match funds, and so on.
The complexity of the process made it difficult for management to efficiently perform strategic analysis and develop a comprehensive budget. In addition, scrutiny of endowment fund allocations was at an all-time high.
Compounding the situation, Wilder’s existing budgeting tool was failing to meet the organizations’ growing needs and was outdated from a technology standpoint. Without real-time analysis and reporting capabilities, the legacy solution had hit the limits of functionality.
As a result, managers were spending hours on low-value activities such as data consolidation and reconciliation, ad hoc report creation, and ‘best guess’ performance analysis. Creating a fiscal year budget required nearly three months of entering and manipulating data.
The accuracy of the data was also in question. While waiting for nightly batch reports to run, employees—eager to develop plans—would conduct spreadsheet analysis on the side.
“We could not ensure the accuracy of our financial data,” said Colleen Mlecoch, IT Director, at Wilder. “And when you don’t trust the data, you can’t think strategically. We needed deeper insights into where we stood financially in order to make strategic decisions about where best to invest resources to design a reliable pathway for the future.”
Solution
To streamline the budgeting process and increase productivity across the
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We have cut our budget planning effort in half, and are now positioned to build a strategic business performance analysis system. This is a tremendous leap forward for our organization.  |
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Colleen Mlecoch
IT Director, Amherst H. Wilder Foundation |
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organization, Wilder engaged Microsoft Gold Certified Partner GNet Group to create a strategic platform that would accommodate its sophisticated budgeting process.
GNet leveraged the Microsoft Business Intelligence (BI) stack to build the custom performance management solution, comprising: Microsoft SQL Server (with SQL Server Analysis Services, SQL Server Reporting Services, and SQL Server Integration Services), Microsoft Office SharePoint Server, and Microsoft Office Excel.
To create the custom data warehouse architecture and data model, GNet used SQL Server, SharePoint InfoPath Forms, a financial data mart, analysis cube, and reports.
The solution utilizes SQL Server Integration Services to extract data—including general ledger, chart of accounts, compensation, benefits, capital assets with depreciation costs, and more—from various transaction systems. The InfoPath-based Planning and Budgeting module coupled with the financial data mart is available for ad-hoc analysis and reporting to create historical analysis, variance, and trend mapping necessary to create the budget model.
Introducing WOMBAT
Wilder named its new planning and budgeting solution “WOMBAT” (Wilder Online Management Budgeting Analytic Tool). It represents the nonprofit’s first step toward an enterprise performance management solution.
Now, as endowment funds are allocated by department, managers input plan and budget data via a familiar web browser interface, and perform real-time analysis to best manage the funds.
Benefits
Faster budget development, better decision making
Today, Wilder managers review and track changes in the budget instantly, as plan data is entered, which greatly reduces the time to create a final budget.
“With the new BI solution, we have cut our budget planning effort in half and involve just a fraction of the people compared to previous years,” said Mlecoch. “Plus, we have deployed a BI platform for the future which enables us to act more strategically. It’s a tremendous leap forward for our organization.”
Senior leaders rely on the solution to make good decisions about services. This in turn increases Wilder’s leadership position in the nonprofit community. “With a full lifecycle decision support system in place, we can see the big picture. Decision making can be more agile, efficient and based on hard data,” added Mlecoch.
Single platform reduces time and costs
With one platform serving as the core budgeting solution, Wilder has reduced the time and money spent on system maintenance, reporting, and future applications. The modular, open, and flexible BI environment enables the nonprofit to quickly adopt and implement changes.
“Microsoft’s vision of embedding BI functionality into core products such as SharePoint, Office and SQL Server, creates a cost effective, straightforward, and functionally rich platform that will serve Wilder’s evolving needs,” said Neelesh Raheja, Vice President Consulting Services, GNet Group.
Familiar interface leads to short learning curve, rapid deployment
Training and rollout was greatly accelerated with the familiar browser-based application. After only a handful of hours of training, users quickly learned the application, eliminating the need for expensive, lengthy usability courses.
Strategic foundation in place
Wilder is looking forward to the next phases of development which will extend the functionality of the application.
“Our planning and budgeting solution is just the beginning—the flood gates are now open,” said Mlecoch. “We’re excited by the results we’ve seen and now have a very solid foundation to build on.”
