Case Studies > Automating A Budgeting Process with A Workflow Engine Leads to Trustworthy Results

Automating A Budgeting Process with A Workflow Engine Leads to Trustworthy Results

Customer Company Size

Large Corporate

Region

America

Country

Canada

Product

Vena
Microsoft Excel

Tech Stack

Workflow Engine
Data Repository
GL Integration

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Productivity Improvements
Cost Savings
Customer Satisfaction

Technology Category

Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)
Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics
Application Infrastructure & Middleware - Data Exchange & Integration

Applicable Industries

Utilities
Professional Service

Applicable Functions

Business Operation
Quality Assurance

Use Cases

Process Control & Optimization
Predictive Quality Analytics
Remote Collaboration

Services

System Integration
Software Design & Engineering Services

About The Customer

One of Canada’s leading water services companies was manually creating, distributing, collecting, and consolidating hundreds of spreadsheets from dozens of departments for budgeting purposes. The company faced significant challenges in tracking user activity and the status of each task in the workflow without communicating with multiple contributors via emails and phone calls. This manual process was time-consuming and prone to errors, impacting the accuracy and timeliness of their budgeting process. The company sought a solution to automate and streamline their budgeting process, ensuring data accuracy and visibility while reducing the reliance on manual processes.

The Challenge

Finance managers were facing significant challenges with version control and email overload due to the manual process of sending and receiving hundreds of budgeting spreadsheets across multiple departments. They struggled to determine the status of tasks in the workflow without constant communication via emails and phone calls, making it difficult to ensure projects stayed on schedule. Additionally, new information had to be manually consolidated into templates, and the use of uncontrolled spreadsheets allowed any user to change formulas or data, potentially impacting the accuracy of the budget.

The Solution

Vena provided a comprehensive solution that seamlessly synced with the client’s GL and supported their complex business rules. Vena stored the client’s most up-to-date data in a single repository, automatically updating linked Excel templates when changes were made. The powerful workflow engine enabled managers to assign tasks and deadlines to specific users and view the progress of each task in near real-time. Detailed audit trails date-, time-, and user-stamped all changes to spreadsheets, and managers could set business rules to prevent unauthorized data entries. The drill-through feature allowed managers to itemize data sets and enter new data at any time, while Vena automatically made FTE calculations based on user input.

Operational Impact

Vena’s secure, central data repository seamlessly synced with the client’s GL, creating a 'single version of the truth'.
The data repository automatically consolidated templates, eliminating the need for the Finance team to link spreadsheets or run complicated macros.
Templates were automatically updated when changes were made to the data in the repository, saving time and eliminating version control and email overload issues.
Managers could easily perform variance analysis by rolling back to previous budgeting templates and comparing differences over time.
The workflow engine provided complete insight into the status of the process, allowing managers to instantly identify and correct bottlenecks, ensuring timely and accurate project completion.

Quantitative Benefit

Reduced time needed to set up and distribute templates by 50%.
Eliminated the need to manually collect and consolidate templates, saving approximately 30 hours per month.
Improved data accuracy by 40% due to the elimination of uncontrolled spreadsheets.
Increased visibility into user activity and task status by 60%.