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Leading Academic Health System

Manual, Spreadsheet-Based Budgeting in a Complex Healthcare Environment

Issue

A leading academic health system struggled with outdated, manual budgeting processes across over a thousand departments, leading to long cycle times and stale decision-making data.

Definition

The central challenge in highly decentralized healthcare systems is managing accurate budgeting and forecasting across hundreds of operational units. When teams rely on spreadsheets disconnected from enterprise systems, planning becomes manual, error-prone, and retrospective. Legacy environments prevent a shift toward performance-based, real-time decision-making.

Common Symptoms

  • Planning completed manually in Excel with version control issues
  • No linkage between planning tools and ERP systems
  • Inability to drill into actuals from budget/forecast figures
  • Budgeting cycles lasted 6-9 months with minimal forecasting agility

Business Implications

  • Leadership couldn't react quickly to operational or financial shifts
  • Decision-making was based on outdated data sets
  • High effort was spent gathering and consolidating data instead of analysis
  • Cross-department collaboration was hindered by inconsistent hierarchies and data sources

Cogleus Solution Approach

Cogleus modernized the health system’s planning and forecasting capabilities by implementing a metric-driven, rolling forecast model powered by Oracle Hyperion.

What We Did

  • Designed a forecasting process focused on operational metrics
  • Implemented Oracle Hyperion Planning for real-time forecasting
  • Automated data consolidation using Financial Data Quality Management (FDM) with PeopleSoft
  • Managed metadata and hierarchies with Oracle Data Integrator (ODI)
  • Enabled forecasting of inter-unit allocations and provided drill-to-detail reporting
  • Trained 200+ users on new tools and workflows

Technology Used

Results

  • Transformed a 6-9 month budgeting process into a quarterly rolling forecast
  • Shifted from static budgets to KPI-driven forecasts
  • Replaced manual data work with strategic, actionable insights
  • Provided real-time visibility across 120+ operational groups

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