Centralised Budgeting Management System (CBMS)
Live Budget management for 96 Ministries and $40Bil USD in funds
The Government of Tanzania Ministry of Finance were preparing budgets for Parliament using their Finance Software add-on to set budgets in conjunction with their 96 Ministries, prepare a final version that is submitted to Parliament for approval, manage changes to the original budget throughout the fiscal year and determine account balances by checking actual expenditure through the finance software.
The existing process using a customized MS Access database collating data for their Finance System Add-on was merely an exercise in collecting a snapshot in time which had no central data verification or consolidation, did not restrict data entry and was not meeting reporting requirements of donors such as the International Monetary Fund and World Bank.
They were looking for a system that would integrate seamlessly with their FMIS, Epicor. Isidore provided a number of demonstrations of Isidore CBMS and worked through multiple scenarios to ensure that the Governments requirements could be met through various scenarios.
The Government of Tanzania knew exactly what they wanted, but had failed to find a vendor to provide them with advice in addition to function, such as:
- a very short implementation (the next budget cycle)
- migration of all existing data including organisation structure and accounts
- simple architecture which would comply with their existing software and hardware architecture and would not require additional software costs or complexity
- was easy to use for all levels of staff, from Admin users to Budget Managers and staff from other Ministries located separately
- set ceilings for expenditure which Ministries could not exceed
- produced budget papers for submission to Cabinet
- integrated with the existing Finance system to share budget balances and use actuals within the budget software for balance updates
- encouraged more collaboration between Minsitries and the Ministry of Finance
- had strict Expenditure Ceiling controls
- provided consolidation within each Ministry and for the whole of Government in the same system
Isidore assisted with the collection of the Government of Tanzania’s specification and implemented the software within the required timeframe. The solution included:
- configuring appropriate screens for data entry, review and reporting
- creating the output Budget papers document, which lists all accounts, expected donors, funding and expenses and is printed on demand
- migrating the existing organisational data including all Ministries, accounts and structures
- collection and loading of Capital Project data for all Ministries for budget purposes
- assistance with location of the software on an existing server
- installation of the software on Government of Tanzania servers and network for access by all Ministries
- integration with the finance system, Epicor, for sharing of actuals and budget data
- training of 300 Ministry staff in group sessions and one-on-one general and admin users
- support for IT and business/finance staff with IT, functional and business process issues
- ongoing updates and maintenance
The successful implementation of Isidore CBMS completely changed the expectations of all those involved from the Government of Tanzania. The Government of Tanzania have been using Isidore CBMS since February 2018 to successfully complete their Centralised Budgeting process for the Ministry of Finance.
The Finance team at the Ministry of Finance have:
- reduced the collection process of budgets from Ministries from 2 months to 2 weeks
- put a process in place to cap all Ministry expenditure with ceilings controlled by the Ministry of Finance which cannot be overwritten and have forced Ministries to budget correctly
- enabled discussion within Ministries of live budget and related detail regardless of location
- provided live budget balances by account code and Ministry level from direct integration with the Finance system
- enjoyed live consolidation of budgets at all levels, from the entire Government of Tanzania, down through all Ministries and by Programs, Account codes and Projects
- captured important additional budget details including Projects, Donor funding, Capital Expenditure, Outcomes, Ministry vision and mission, outcomes and targets
- become a single source of truth and management for various Ministry project, program and other non financial details
- utilized Isidore BI solution to provide adhoc reporting from the live database
- managed multi-language function to display details in users selected language
The solution features include:
- Live integration between the Finance and Budget systems
- Optimised business process
- Collation of data between Microsoft AX and Isidore CBMS
- Full Integration
- Live Access to all users based on role
- Exports to Excel
- Live Dashboards configurable for users
- Project and outcome reporting
- Live on screen, printed and exported to Excel reporting
- Live Excel linked reports for direct output to Excel
- Configurable System Settings
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