Control of Data in Government

Calumo is a Comprehensive Solution for Corporate Reporting, Budgeting, and Forecasting in Government via MyOutcomes

Back in 2018, the Department of Planning and Environment’s (DPE) main challenge was its inability to consolidate two separate SAP instances, one with business warehouse and the other without. Employees were reliant on Microsoft Excel and there was no comprehensive budgeting and forecasting tool across either instance. Additionally, one instance no longer supported a budgeting tool and was proving ineffectual. DPE wanted a modern tool that could handle the complexities of outcomes-based budgeting and deliver strong reporting and forecasting results. DPE went to tender to find a solution which they named “MyOutcomes” and chose Calumo.

With the “Mega-Machinery of Government (MOG)” in 2019, DPE, Department of Planning and Industry (DPI) and other departments were merged into the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment (DPIE). The net result was six different enterprise resource planning (ERP) software and no centralized system to maintain budget information and deliver on increased reporting needs. MyOutcomes powered by Calumo was already configured to handle multiple GL instances and had established a new one-SAP GL structure. As a result, it easily facilitated the consolidation of the six ERP instances. Using agile methodology, the initial implementation of MyOutcomes at DPIE took less than four months from decision time to the initial creation of reports.

After implementation, MyOutcomes was re-focused for improved delivery on corporate financial data and financial reporting. The existing budgeting and forecasting capability expanded to serve monthly forecasting at an operating expenses or expenditure (OPEX) and local exchange carrier (LEC) level across the entire cluster.

A further MOG in 2020 created the new cluster Department of Regional NSW (DRNSW) where MyOutcomes was again implemented, integrating historical data and enabling financial reporting within a month.

Predicting a future need for this across more government departments, the MyOutcomes team developed and delivered a templated solution where full functionality can be split and repeated across multiple clusters.

“After the 2020 MOG, Regional NSW was separated from DPIE. MyOutcomes was able to deliver on our complex requirements, including data separation and discrete accurate reporting. With the ability to integrate multiple data sources, this approach is going to revolutionise the way MOGs are managed in the future”​ – Angus Begg, CFO, DRNSW

What My Outcomes Powered by Calumo Delivers

MyOutcomes is a comprehensive reporting and analytics solution built on the Calumo system and deployed at both DPIE and DRNSW. It provides the government clusters with a single platform to manage actual results, undertake detailed budgeting, perform periodic reforecasting, and deliver a consistent set of management and executive reports. It is a highly scalable platform that conforms to NSW Government security requirements.

The implementation of MyOutcomes at DPIE and DRNSW has created a template that provides a fast-track methodology to have subsequent clusters up and running in months. The template includes pre-built budgeting, planning, and reporting models, as well as the rapid integration of historic data.

Through MyOutcomes the finance role was transformed from task-based management accountants to informed business advisers. MyOutcomes provides:

• A single source of truth for actuals, initial budget allocations, and interactively approved PRIME aligned revisions and periodic re-forecasts.
• Outcomes reporting.
• A common chart of accounts for mapping multiple current and future ERP instances.
• Top-down and bottom-up budgeting at the program level.
• Drill-to transactions to easily enable data transparency.
• Visibility for ad hoc analysis.
• Self-service reporting to improve staff collaboration and engagement.
• Automated monthly reports. No more month-end hell.
• Centralized capture of performance commentary.

“MyOutcomes allows us to define reports based on real-time data and make them automatically available to all necessary staff. Time taken to create reports has been slashed from 2-3 days, to less than a day, and reports can be re-used at the push of the button.” – Chris Martin, CFO, DPIE

What You Can Achieve with Calumo

Future-Proof Your Department. There are three constants in life: death, taxes and MOGs. By integrating your disparate data systems into one single source of truth, Calumo saves you countless hours re-engineering your data when change hits.

Our NSW Government specific template focusses implementation with a fast-track methodology to have you up and in running in weeks. We have pre-built budgeting, planning, and reporting models to ensure your team hits the ground running, no matter what new structure you find yourself in. Integration of historic data is quick and easy. We’ve done it before, and we can do it again.

Reduce Your Risk. If your team is working with disparate data sources that don’t communicate, then you are opening yourself up to significant risk of manual error. Calumo easily aggregates your data to bring everyone onto the same page and get them talking to same set of numbers.

Updated in real-time, Calumo also reduces risk by giving you early visibility of results. This keeps your team agile and able to proactively allocate time or money where it is needed, rather than waiting for each month-end to react.

Data Transparency Improves Trust and Makes Your Life Easier. Calumo reports allow users to drill down into the actual transactions behind each data point, to understand the root cause of any discrepancies. Government department budgeting is a complex and multi-layered affair. internal Calumo users can turnaround new “living reports” in days. These can be distributed and run by any authenticated Calumo user.

This availability of fine-grain reporting and analysis also improves trust and accountability within your team. All users can access the same numbers and can be confident of their source. This visibility ensures teams are held accountable for how their budget is being spent and the results they achieve. From a funding security perspective, this also means that every single dollar spent is defensible.

Ready Your Team for Outcomes-Based Budgeting and Reporting. All government departments will soon have a need to regularly report on top-down and bottom-up budget models. With outcomes-based budgeting, frequent and accurate reporting on performance is essential. The kicker is that this will need to include not just financials, but a whole other array of data points to demonstrate effective use of budget.

By integrating your current data systems into Calumo, this depth and frequency of reporting is easy. You can slice and dice your data by any metric you choose and have this analysis ready for review at the click of a button.

Looking to the Future

The current focus within MyOutcomes is to improve the delivery of outcomes-based reporting. MyOutcomes will deliver comprehensive outcomes-based budgeting, as well as monthly corporate reporting. This will include data from multiple divisions including finance, HR, recruitment, IR, WHS, procurement, and ICT, as well as legal and governance data.

Hear DRNSW’s Paul Watkins Talk About the Results for His Team

Recently, Calumo had the pleasure of attending the 2021 Shared Services and Outsourcing Week. At the event, we were proud to sponsor Paul Watkins to speak on how MyOutcomes by Calumo has transformed the way the Department of Regional NSW manages its data.

In the presentation Paul discusses the following points:

• The extensive data disintegration DRNSW was experiencing and all of the problems that caused.
• DRNSW’s vision for a single source of truth that could connect its disparate data and boost the cluster’s efficiency.
• DRNSW’s desired deliverables for the project. It needed a solution that could provide a single source of truth for real-time planning and reporting, standardize processes and reduce errors from manual data entry.
• The specific use-cases that DRNSW had across the financial year, including project streams, budget allocation, periodic monitoring, year-end reporting.
• The rapid speed at which MyOutcomes was deployed at DRNSW.
  • DPE implementation from signing to useable solution–four months.
  • DPIE Mega-MOG (re-focused requirements)–two months for consolidated reporting.
• What is MyOutcomes and how it can be used for Prime outputs and mapping, auditable adjustments, automated month-end reporting (funding, OPEX, CAPEX, LEC), accessing historical data (pre/post MOG), programming level top-down and bottom-up budgeting.
• Teams, managers, project leaders and executive leaders use MyOutcomes across DRNSW to access and run reports via self-service options, analyse data and create ad hoc views. Business advisory teams are able to service all customers using a central tool and one source of truth.
• DRNSW’s future plans for expanding the functionality of MyOutcomes.
• Security and technical considerations for clusters considering MyOutcomes.
• Lessons learned at DPE, DPIE and DRNSW.

Click here to watch Paul’s presentation in full.

If you want more information on how MyOutcomes powered by Calumo can help your cluster, contact us, today.