YMCA NSW Simplifies Budgeting and Forecasting Processes with Oracle EPM Cloud
YMCA NSW enhances control for budget review process and supports better decisions with Oracle Cloud.
YMCA NSW is a profit-for-purpose organization that supports more than 40 local communities in New South Wales and the Australian Capital Territory. It runs recreation centers and sports stadiums facilities; children’s services; and outdoor education and camping programs. YMCA NSW believes in the power of inspired young people and pursues a range of impact activities that builds their capacity in employment, education, well-being, and mental health.
Previously, each budget owner needed to download and consolidate data from the main accounting system into spreadsheets. The process was cumbersome and error-prone, making it difficult for managers to analyze the underlying business drivers. YMCA NSW wanted to simplify the entire process and enable users to make more informed decisions.
“By standardizing the consolidation cycle across multiple business divisions with Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service, we enhanced data accuracy and shortened the time to prepare our forecast and budget reviews. Our managers can now focus on analyzing business results and make faster decisions.”
Business challenges
- Improve the efficiency of the budget review and approval cycle by consolidating complex financial data from multiple business divisions, such as children’s services and fitness centers, into a centralized platform and eliminating back-and-forth emails
- Ensure data accuracy and increase management’s confidence by providing users with instant access to planning data, such as budget for a new aquatic center, instead of using manual spreadsheets
- Support faster decisions by enabling managers to easily analyze business performance in multiple dimensions, such as by division and by location
Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service is a powerful tool for analysis and decision making. To optimize its capabilities, it is important to carefully plan and define the right data structures, understand what information is required and will be used, and critically, how the data will be extracted via reporting.
Why YMCA NSW Chose Oracle
“We chose Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service for its comprehensive reporting features, integration capabilities with other data sources, and proven stability.”
—John DeVitis, Financial Planning and Analysis Manager, YMCA NSW
Results
- Increased planning process efficiency and enabled managers to focus on analyzing business drivers—such as profitable occupancy growth in children’s services—rather than collating spreadsheets, by using Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service to automate the consolidation cycle and enable instantaneous changes to reports
- Enhanced control for the budget review process by gaining the flexibility to configure workflows and approvers based on the needs of each business unit, such as community services and fitness centers, empowering users to easily view and track the approval status via a centralized planning platform
- Leveraged the predictive forecasting capability of Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service to provide executives with faster and greater insight into the business, such as modelling different scenarios of the number of children attending outside school hours’ care centers by location
- Raised the quality of reports to board members and improved management confidence by integrating Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service with its accounting system and data warehouse, providing a single, reliable view of financial and operating results for YMCA NSW
- Improved user experience by adopting an intuitive Oracle Planning and Budgeting Cloud Service to streamline budgeting and forecasting processes for multiple business divisions