Existing Process

Commomwealth Rehabilitation Services (CRS) Australia used spreadsheets and a Microsoft Access database to collect their budget information from over 170 offices located throughout Australia.

CRS provided services to the public and so were self-funded with detailed driver based revenue and expenses, making spreadsheets very complex.

Problem

This process meant that it took several months to collect the data from their offices, they couldn't change any parameters during the process and they only had the full organisational Budget after they tediously re-entered each offices data into their central system, which took several staff many weeks to do.

They also had frequently changing reporting requirements with short notice, so needed a solution which would be flexible in a cost-effective manner to be able to make changes which could not be met by other software.

Solution

Isidore provided them with our Budgeting solution which performed the same functions as their existing spreadsheets, was as easy for non-accounting managerial staff to use and was centralised in their Head office so admin staff could open and close access, make changes immediate and view the budgets as they were being entered by staff regardless of where they were located in Australia. The time required for CRS to collect their budget information was reduced from several months to two weeks, it was easy enough for all staff levels to use (including managerial staff), there was no duplication of data entry and Financial staff were freed up to perform analysis instead of collection activities.

Result

Utilising the flexibility of Isidore, this assisted CRS to move to performing Forecasting, which previously would have been virtually impossible. Isidore now automatically integrates with SAP (CRS's Financial Information Management System) so actuals are automatically loaded into BERT each month, and relevant reporting can be performed for ongoing analysis.