Integrated Business Planning
Monday, 21 September 2020
Vision Eye Institute achieves integrated business planning with Board
Vision Eye Institute (VEI) was underwhelmed by its initial implementation of Board. Instead of tossing it out, VEI looked for another implementation partner, found mecklemore, re-implemented and unlocked the software's full potential. Learn from Vision Eye Institute how they turned their investment in Board's decision-making platform around and achieved a high degree of automation, timely reporting and cohesive budgeting models.
The Company: Australia’s largest private provider of ophthalmic services
Vision Eye Institute is Australia’s largest private provider of ophthalmic services, with a strong commitment to clinical and scientific excellence and delivering the highest quality outcomes for patients. VEI has clinics and day surgeries across VIC, NSW, QLD and SA.
The Challenge: incumbent did software a disservice
VEI’s finance team had been using BOARD Corporate Performance Management software for budgeting, forecasting, and reporting based on an implementation provided by an incumbent consulting firm. However, report generation and other frequently run processes were rather labour intensive and took their time to complete. Sometimes individual reports would require a full day to be generated. In addition, some processes made use of standard Excel files - something the VEI finance team felt was not in the spirit of a fully integrated system. VEI was aware of Board's extensive capabilities and felt there was a lot of improvement potential in the way Board was deployed and reached out to mecklemore. That changed the game at VEI.
The Solution: re-implement and create a platform for continuous expansion
Over a period of 40 days, mecklemore fully re-developed the existing application and replaced it with a modern, fast and easy to use budgeting, forecasting & reporting model. Mecklemore introduced weekly & daily flash reporting and fully replaced the long-running and labour-intensive Excel reports. Furthermore, mecklemore enabled driver-based budgeting and forecasting, e.g. sales forecasting by session, procedure, doctor and clinic. This was completed in 2018 and ever since VEI and mecklemore have been jointly working on continuously improving other aspects of VEI's FP&A operations and processes.
Mecklemore Consultant Daniel Zillmann on the working relationship with VEI: “I always enjoy working with the VEI team. From day one I felt welcome and a part of the team. All VEI team members have a great understanding of their processes and a clear vision on how to implement them in Board. We are very happy to have them as a client and are looking forward to enhancing VEI's Board experience even further”.
The Benefits: daily sales reporting and FP&A process automation
Working with mecklemore enabled VEI to provide daily revenue information in a presentable format to the management team, an outcome that has been invaluable. This also saved VEI numerous work hours through automation, allowing team members to focus on analytical and value-adding tasks. The integration of operational drivers and their financial outcomes has resulted in meaningful planning processes to the field and insightful reporting. The team is now in a position to do more scenario-based budgeting and forecasting by tweaking drivers and evaluating financial impacts.
Steve Wall, VEI Commercial Finance Manager, on working with mecklemore: “Before engaging mecklemore to revamp our Board build, the impression we had was that Board was just a fancy adding up tool, but we knew it had so much more potential. Mecklemore have helped to open up that potential and bring our ideas to life.”
The Future: continuous evolution of budgeting, planning and reporting
Going forward, VEI is planning to keep evolving their current budgeting model with the help of mecklemore and automate as many tasks as possible to ensure efficient and quick, reliable turnaround for all FP&A activities. Most recently, these activities include roster planning for doctors and the addition of a capex model.
Are you seeking to transform your planning and analysis function in a similar way? We'd be delighted to discuss your specific digital transformation needs.
