Cancer Institute
Corporate Performance
Management for
Healthcare
case study
Background
The Dana-Farber Cancer Institute is a pioneer in cutting-edge cancer research and a principal teaching affiliate of Harvard
Medical School.
Challenge
Labor-Intensive Budgeting
Dana-Farber’s budgeting process was manual, error-prone, and lacked flexibility. The brittle nature of the spreadsheet-based process made it difficult to incorporate forecasts and multiple budget passes, limiting their ability to make projections throughout the year.
A Disjointed Process with Few Controls
Since budget models were dispersed across Excel spreadsheets, there was a disconnect between areas such as the Finance and
Research groups. Without workflow and checks to control the data input into the budget, Dana-Farber experienced issues such as the under or over allocation of salary expenses. There was often a lag in incorporating key data in certain areas into the P&L, resulting in stale reports that had limited use for end users.
Lack of Accountability
The housing of budget and actual data in separate systems made it difficult to pinpoint variances and enforce accountability. Because there was little consistency in the level of detail across the disparate budget areas there was often no insight into the numbers that made up high level expenses. Even when information was brought together into monthly reports these were often slow to come and lagged behind in information.
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Dana-Farber
Cancer Institute
Corporate Performance
Management for
Healthcare
case study
Solution
Dana-Farber selected the Infor Corporate Performance Management (CPM) platform in 2006 for Operating, Research, Salary, Patient
Revenue, and Capital Projects budgeting. They engaged CFO
Solutions to help them control and build workflow into their budget process. CFO Solutions brought the disjointed components of the budget into a single place, giving Dana-Farber control they never had before over areas such as Salary Cost and Benefits. As they began to see results, they continued to enhance the application with additional information and customized drill-though reporting to give them access to even more detailed data at the transaction level.
Users now have a clear picture into how departments are meeting their targets. Results
A Reduced Budget Cycle
Automating the budget cycle and wrapping it with workflow capabilities cut down Dana-Farber’s budget cycle by two months - time
they
