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Budgeting

Integrated Cost Model, not just Data Entry

UI’s Budgeting Solution is used by all departments as a central repository for data collection, modeling, and reporting of actual and projected resources and O&M/Capital spending. It provides the flexibility to address the very different budgeting needs that range from field operations to corporate office functions. Our Budgeting Solution embraces these real-world conditions in a real-time collaborative framework that integrates actuals and projections to support a rolling forecast. All of this is supported by transparent drilldown with a robust reporting tool back to the lowest level of detail.

With UI’s Budgeting Solution, you can:

 

  • ► Easily assemble and consolidate resource balanced and integrated O&M/Capital direct-cost spending plans across your entire enterprise.
  • ► Handle loadings, clearings, and complex service company allocations (settlements) with unparalleled speed, transparency, and reporting that can withstand the regulatory scrutiny to support forward-looking rate-filings. 
  • ► Leverage toolsets and user-defined business rules to achieve best practice monthly rolling forecasts and develop what-if scenarios.
  • ► Take advantage of industry best practices, including unit-based budgeting and earned-value reporting.


“For O&M budgets and targets, I used to work half in Excel and half in the system. Now we can work in one system. And with the monthly process for the forecast system, everyone can pull the same set of data from one place.”


UI Customer


 

 

The Power of our Budgeting Solution

Accessibility

User-friendly and specifically tailored to organizational roles, the browser-based tool promotes participation with operations that results in front-line budget ownership with real-time data consolidation. The tool becomes the  communication channel for achieving the balance between bottom-up requirements and top-down targets.

Budget faster

By automating manual tasks, eliminating offline spreadsheets, and        providing a real-time collaborative platform, the time it takes to produce a budget/forecast is significantly reduced. This provides time and opportunity for evaluating alternatives, optimizing budgets, and forecasts.

Robust scenario and variance reporting

Easily compare scenarios: Budget vs. Actuals, Budget vs. 3+9 Forecast, What-if vs. Budget, and more.

Capital budgeting and project portfolio management

Gives you the power to execute project-level estimating, compatible-unit estimating, and project scoring. You can also conduct unfunded risk-quantification in terms of impact and probability and quickly identify project overbooking and contingency capability.

Labor balancing

Employee-level headcount-forecasting and labor-pricing helps managers with position planning. Automated labor integration and balancing between Capital and O&M reduces manual involvement, improves accuracy, and reduces the cycle time to develop a labor-balanced budget/forecast.

Improve speed and transparency of service company allocations

Leverage in-memory processing and powerful rules engine to reduce the runtime from days to minutes. Drill down to original source costs.

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Learn how UI Solutions Group’s Budgeting Solution is Helping our Clients Succeed

Modules Commonly Integrated into the UI Budgeting Solution

UI partners with our clients to bundle the appropriate combination of the 21 modules to address your specific needs and help you achieve your business outcomes. This way, you get exactly what you need and nothing you don’t.

Work Drivers
Capital Spending
Labor
Loadings & Allocations
Core Budgeting
Expenses
Plant Book
Target & Assumptions
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CLIENT SUCCESS 1 Transforming to Performance-Based Budgeting

Challenge

Our client wanted to shift from traditional baseline budgeting practices to performance-based methods, enabling managers to focus on value produced and not just money spent

Solution

  • The module was configured to allow users to budget by units-of-work, which the system transformed into proper accounting while applying centrally managed rules for unit pricing, labor balancing, loadings, and allocations.
  • When planned work was already maintained in another system, integrations were established with these work-management databases, avoiding duplicate data entries.
  • The monthly import of actual results allowed the system to produce performance measuring analytics, including: price, labor and material efficiencies, and earned value reporting.

Impact

Our client’s budgeting process was transformed from a traditional baseline process to a robust cost model that provided bottom-up cost justifications for rate cases, explained cost variances, and gauged operational performance.

CLIENT SUCCESS 2 Improving Transparency and Speed

Challenge

Our client’s inability to accurately reflect the complex and multi-step service company allocation rules in their 10-year budget made them vulnerable to regulatory scrutiny. Their previous process lacked transparency and, even when systematized, took way too long to run.

Solution

  • UI Solutions Group's Allocation Integration Framework read in their exact allocation rules from their general ledger.
  • The In-Memory Rules Engine processed the 120 monthly budget periods in real-time, exactly emulating the actual-period allocations processed by the GL.
  • The powerful Pivot Reporting tool provided drillable results, making the allocation process clear and transparent.Standard reports allowed managers to see leakage at varying levels in the ROE calculation.

Impact

With full transparency provided to target organizations, management was able to achieve their defendable and efficiently-produced 10-year fully allocated budget.

CLIENT SUCCESS 3 Achieving a Rolling Forecast

Challenge

Our client’s leadership demanded a rolling forecast to provide more accurate guidance to financial markets and enable operations to make more informed decisions.

Solution

  • Our Budgeting solution captured their business rules and offline spreadsheets in an online collaborative workspace, reducing the need for manual analyst interaction during the reforecasting process.
  • UI Solutions Group's enterprise integration layer pulled in data from other systems, eliminating data entry tasks.
  • The Rules Engine transformed imported work-planning assumptions into the required accounting format and automated the application of labor pricing, loadings, and allocation rules.

Impact

The utility was able to automate most of the monthly reforecast effort and shift low-value clerical time to high-value analytical time. In the process, they reduced the time and cost associated with developing the annual budget, improved the accuracy of the budget/forecast, and achieved the rolling forecast objective.

Work Drivers Module

Traditional budgeting methods and budget vs. actual reporting views aren’t well suited to meet corporate objectives regarding “bending the cost curve” and maximizing regulatory return. UI’s Work Drivers Module enables you to develop budgets and forecasts by linking budgets to their cost drivers.

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This Module integrates with other modules as part of the following solution:


Budgeting

Capital Spending Module

Efficient decision-making and forecasting of capital spending are critical to the long-term health of the enterprise. UI’s Capital Spending Module has your best interest in making wiser capital investment and operational decisions with its fully-vetted capital project view. 

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This Module integrates with other modules as part of the following solution:


Budgeting

Labor Module

Producing a balanced labor budget is a manual, time-consuming process that we know is no easy task. UI’s Labor Module takes the guesswork out of it for you with accurate forecasting and modeling features so you can develop optimal business plans.

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This Module integrates with other modules as part of the following solution:


Budgeting

Loadings & Allocations Module

A forecasting module must be able to calculate loaded costs and allocate shared services using the same methodology as the actuals system of record, run this process with monthly detail, and more. UI’s Loadings & Allocations Module can do this for you multiple times daily by leveraging an in-memory allocations engine. 

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This Module integrates with other modules as part of the following solution:

Budgeting

Core Budgeting Module

We understand the need for a web-based, user-friendly, flexible platform to facilitate the creation of your budgets. UI’s Core Budgeting Module gives you this and makes completing budgets and collaborating across your organization more manageable. 

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This Module integrates with other modules as part of the following solution:


Budgeting

Expenses Module

Since utilities are almost always under pressure to bend the cost curve, O&M spending is often heavily scrutinized. UI’s Expenses Module conveniently isolates O&M expenses for you and makes it simple to view everything you need regarding your full budget details.

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This Module integrates with other modules as part of the following solution:


Budgeting

Plant Book Module

Having a detailed, reliable forecast of current construction work, plant in-service, and depreciation is important. UI’s Plant Book Module does this for you by interfacing with plant accounting and budget systems to produce an accurate and detailed capital forecast to support all your financial planning and regulatory filing needs.

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This Module integrates with other modules as part of the following solution:


Plant

Targets & Assumptions Module

Time constraints during rate case or month-end processes often mean that accuracy is sacrificed to allow process completion. UI’s Targets & Assumptions Module creates consistency among your teams by aligning assumptions across the business to reduce the margin of error even during crunch times.

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This Module integrates with other modules as part of the following solution:

Financial Planning