A large US federal agency with a multibillion-dollar budget was looking to improve their financial systems capabilities by automating their budget formulation, planning, and execution processes. The primary goal of this modernization project was to increase the accessibility of budgetary and financial information to enhance reporting, decision-making, accountability, and transparency.
Compliance with emerging financial governance regulations was a key driver for this massive project spanning four environments and 25 Oracle applications with impacts on budget execution, acquisition, travel, purchase cards, contracts, vacancy planning, formulation, operations planning, human resources, and payroll management.
The challenges the agency wanted to address included:
Manual processes — Prior to the modernization project, many of the agency’s processes were manual. For example, the agency manually reconciled cardholder statements and records and pulled budgetary report data. This created backlogs and delays in accessing data and kept decision-makers from having the information needed to make data-driven, agile decisions.
Lack of visibility — There was little data availability or flexibility in tracking departmental budgets or making changes throughout the year. Budgetary information was centralized and required support to access. Departments struggled to make informed decisions or pivot their strategy.
Continuity — With a project of this scope at a large agency, continuity during the transition was crucial. They needed a partner who had experience managing Oracle modernization projects without affecting an organization’s business goals.
Guidehouse supported this large-scale modernization project through its Oracle strategic technology alliance. As an Oracle partner for more than 10 years, the firm brings a track record of delivering successful enterprise-wide Oracle projects.
Guidehouse provided consulting, solutions delivery, implementation management, and transition support focused on modernizing financial operations, removing time-consuming manual processes, and allowing for an end-to-end integration of budget process. This includes development of a solution that leveraged the Oracle Application Development Framework, Oracle EPM (Hyperion), UiPath, and Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition to modernize and digitalize the agency’s financial and budgetary processes.
Guidehouse’s proficiency in Oracle enterprise performance management and extensive experience managing Oracle modernization projects of all sizes enabled the project team to strategically plan the agency’s implementation and add the configurations needed to achieve its business goals.
The project was structured over a nine-month period to avoid affecting key business milestones. Modernizing environments one by one and focusing on operational continuity ensured the agency could meet all federally required budget cycle timelines.
The project sought to achieve the following goals:
Guidehouse’s successful management of the federal agency’s transition project enabled adoption of a new financial management platform that integrated budget, performance, and strategic planning without disruptions to business processes. Guidehouse led full life cycle implementation of Oracle products to facilitate and streamline 50+ business processes (acquisition, payroll, travel, and P-card etc.) for over 3,000 users across the agency.
Budget Planning
Budget Execution
Payroll Management
Purchase Card Management
Acquisitions
Funding Transfers
Data Calls
Data Visualization
Automation
Guidehouse has implemented robotic process automation (RPA) to reduce manual activities and increase efficiency and data accuracy by enabling automated entry of the transactions (obligations) into the Oracle ERP platform. This led to a significant reduction in manual effort and reduces the manual errors and improved financial reconciliation.
These transformations had the following key overarching impacts:
Guidehouse’s success in helping clients complete large modernization projects such as this comes from our extensive understanding of Oracle enterprise solutions, as well as our industry knowledge. Our deep bench of combined technology and enterprise expertise enables us to customize solutions for clients to achieve both their IT and business goals.
Need help with modernizing your organization’s financial processes? Contact us to learn more about our Oracle strategic technology alliance.
Guidehouse is a global consultancy providing advisory, digital, and managed services to the commercial and public sectors. Purpose-built to serve the national security, financial services, healthcare, energy, and infrastructure industries, the firm collaborates with leaders to outwit complexity and achieve transformational changes that meaningfully shape the future.