Save the Children is the world’s leading independent organisation for children.
They protect children from harm and help them access quality education and health services. Globally, Save the Children directly reaches millions of children whose rights are threatened across more than 100 countries every year.
Discover how Save the Children transformed their financial planning and maximised mission impact with Workday Adaptive Planning in the video below.
Challenge
As a not-for-profit on an important mission, Save the Children Australia (SCA), with a turnover of $250 million, directs as much funds as possible to their programs and their beneficiaries – children. They run as lean as possible to make sure donor funds go further for greater impact.
Solution
After considering various solutions, SCA decided on Workday Adaptive Planning based on how it suited their requirements, including its flexibility and value for money.
They also found that the recommended implementation partner, QMetrix, has a strong not-for-profit client base in Australia, and would be essential in delivering a successful outcome with the Workday Adaptive Planning platform.
Forecasting with more information, more transparency
SCA were doing high level monthly outlooks which provided some understanding of where they were trending for the full year. Now with Workday Adaptive Planning, they do monthly detailed forecasts across the business and their programs.
Michael Dugina, Chief Financial Officer at SCA says, “It’s been a pretty significant change. The team actually did not think they could undertake that level of work. Now that the models have been built in Workday Adaptive Planning, they’ve seen that they can. There has been a huge productivity advantage.”
They can now automate certain components such as using workflows for approvals between different levels of the organisation. It has given much greater transparency between the prior and next forecast, to not only help their board, executive team and program managers understand what is changing across their environment, but what’s actually happening and what they are planning to do.
As Michael sums it up, “We’re getting more information more frequently, with greater transparency. It’s made a great difference”.
Removing single point dependencies
In the past, teams across SCA would work largely independently to create their own Excel models, which would then be consolidated – quite a troublesome task when each model was different. If someone who built an Excel model left, it was also difficult to transfer knowledge over.
With the support of QMetrix, more structure has been built into the planning models and processes to deliver greater consistency across teams. The process is more streamlined and single point dependencies are no longer an issue.
From spreadsheets everywhere to a central database
SCA have over 1,000 staff nationally and internationally, 200 of whom are responsible for managing budgets. Previously, the finance team would have to download everything on a spreadsheet, go to a series of managers who would provide feedback – and the back and forth would continue – before they manually consolidated and uploaded data back to their general ledger system.
Now with Workday Adaptive Planning, there is a central data repository, refreshed in real time, that everyone can update and rely on as the single source of truth.
The finance team were undertaking much of their planning and reporting on Excel and saw that it was not sustainable for managing an organisation of their scale and size.
SCA recognised the need for accuracy and more frequent forecasting in order to give them better insights into their financial outlook and to identify and manage risks. They also wanted to increase productivity and efficiencies in the finance team, helping them work faster without working harder.
“Workday Adaptive Planning has a user-friendly interface which program managers and finance team members can use to enter and manage forecasts. They have access to the information that they need at their fingertips in a way that is easy to digest. There is automation, and it saves us so much time and hassle. It’s given lots of capability to provide transparency as well. It’s made things a lot easier”.
– Michael Dugina, Chief Financial Officer
Flexible and informative reporting
As a not-for-profit receiving funding through donors like the general public, foundations and government to name a few, there is a vast array of reports SCA have to prepare in order to meet donor reporting requirements and for compliance purposes.
Reports are also used internally by program managers to help track each program, looking at actuals versus plans and enabling them to make decisions more quickly. It can be challenging to create so many different reports, but Workday Adaptive Planning has given them the flexibility and structure to make it easier to deliver.
Reports are updated with the latest information with a click of the button. It is also easy to drill down and dig into the detailed information for both actuals and plans.
Both a finance and business tool
When asked what he likes best about Workday Adaptive Planning, Michael says, “The Workday Adaptive Planning interface is intuitive for the non-finance user. We’re moving towards a more self-service model and developing the capabilities of our budget holders so they can self-serve more.
“It’s becoming less of a finance tool and more of a business tool – although the accountants love it because they can work in the back-end and create models that the business users need. Given that flexibility and that it is not too technical to use, it’s been a great win for our team.”
As an example, QMetrix built a workforce planning model which makes it easy for program managers to forecast and plan for the resources required to deliver their programs. It also helps them ensure that they appropriately recover those costs against contracts and grants.
On working with QMetrix, he says, “QMetrix have been really flexible. They have been great in helping us understand our own business, and they’ve delivered a great product with the Workday Adaptive Planning system. Together, they make a really strong package.”
Impact for Save the Children
- Getting more information more frequently, with greater transparency
- Removed single point dependencies and moved to a more streamlined
and structured process across many entities - A user-friendly solution which finance can build models in and automate functions, and 200 budget holders can access and self-serve
- From high level outlooks to detailed monthly forecasts where they can see actuals versus plans, and evaluate program risks and progress more effectively
- Flexible and quicker reporting for many different stakeholders
Save the Children’s solution
Consulting solution: Budgeting and planning
Technology solution: Workday Adaptive Planning
Implementation partner: QMetrix
Industry: Not-for-profits
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