Background: Company X, a subsidiary of Sri Lanka's prominent apparel manufacturer Group A, specializes in offering Finance and Human Resource services to other Group A subsidiaries.
Problem Statement: Company X currently relies on a mainstream ERP system for financial record-keeping, lacking comprehensive budget tracking capabilities. This limitation impairs financial monitoring and decision-making within the Finance team.
Challenges with Existing Process: The existing budget tracking process involves exporting data from the ERP system monthly and manually updating each row of data in a spreadsheet software against the budgeted numbers. Despite the use of advanced spreadsheet formulae and having a standard template to record the data, this existing process of manually mapping and generating projections has several negative consequences: • Negatively impacts KPI achievement by consuming time and resources. • Results in cascading delays in financial tasks. • Causes communication delays, affecting stakeholders' timely decision-making.
Objectives: This project aims to, • Develop a user-friendly, cost-effective web-based budget tracking tool tailored to Company X's needs. • Expedite the mapping and forecasting process to a one-day turnaround. • Implement robust budget vs. actual variance analysis by WD4. • Enable year-end profit/loss projection based on actual data by WD5. • Enhance resource allocation decision-making. • Visualize revenue and cost trends with a minimum of three data visualizations.
Scope and Approach: The solution will consist of three key modules: • Upload Data: Users can easily upload actual income and expenses monthly in an ERP-friendly format, replacing the manual and time-consuming process of matching budget numbers against actuals. • View Forecast: The tool provides a forward-looking perspective, generating projections based on logical algorithms using uploaded actuals, thus eliminating delays. • View Insights: Customizable charts provide a snapshot of financial data, facilitating quick comprehension of trends, patterns, and areas requiring attention.
The scope of the project includes the development of the web-based budget tracking tool, as well as the training of the Finance team on how to use the tool. The approach to the project will be as follows: • Project management: The project will be managed using a waterfall methodology. • Analysis and design: The tool will be designed using user-centered design principles. • Implementation: The tool will be implemented using a cloud-based platform. • Testing: The tool will be tested using both manual and automated methods.
Fitness for Purpose: Success will be demonstrated by: • User-friendliness, requiring minimal training. • Detailed financial tracking, surpassing ERP limitations. • Cost-effectiveness within budget constraints.