The Problem
A budget tool had been selected as the system of record for annual operating and capital budgets and reporting in the university’s academic and administrative units. Because of significant challenges with the tool’s performance and lack of needed functionality, units were researching, and in some cases acquiring, individual solutions and shadow systems, leading to increased costs and disparate processes.

The Challenge
While there are some common objectives across the units, each unit creates and reports on its budget according to requirements from its leadership (academic Deans and administrative Vice Presidents), which can vary significantly across the university and conflict with the requirements from the central budget office. Because of these different requirements and the issues with the budget tool, the units face several challenges, including:

• Timing of unit budget planning and central budget office planning are not aligned, increasing effort at critical times to meet deadlines
• Cumbersome procedures in the budget tool, causing increased effort and rework
• Lack of incentive for units to work together to solve common problems, leading to duplicating work, reinventing procedures, and creating workarounds for problems that may have already been solved

The general effect of these and other challenges on the unit budget directors and their staff distill down to two major pain points: increased time and effort to do their jobs.

The Approach
We conducted a discovery initiative over three months that included the following tasks:

• Interviewed an initial subset of budget directors to gain an understanding of individual unit processes and needs
• Engaged a larger working group to provide additional feedback through a workshop / brainstorming session
• Vetted all interview and meeting notes with participants to ensure accuracy
• Met with leadership throughout the project to manage expectations
• Analyzed data and compiled findings

The Solution
We identified over 50 pain points that unit budget directors and their staffs experience during the budget lifecycle, many of which related to the poor performance and lack of expected functionality of the budget tool. Other findings related to lifecycle timing issues that affected reporting and other activities, and to lack of communication, training, and documentation. Here is a synopsis of the recommendations:

• Improve usability of the budget tool in several identified functions
• Provide procedures and mechanisms for performing several critical activities in the budget lifecycle
• Improve communication, including documentation, training, and common terminology
• Improve alignment of the unit and central budget office processes and timelines

The Results
As this was a recently completed project, there are no specific results that can be reported yet, other than the enthusiasm that was expressed for the report.

Testimonial
“The recommendations we got from Norveld’s discovery project for our complex budgeting process were so valuable that they are now our guidebook for simplifying procedures, streamlining processes, and adding simple features that will add great value to our system without spending hundreds of thousands of dollars.”

Conclusion
This case study demonstrates the importance of thoroughly understanding the client’s needs and the issues preventing users and stakeholders of systems from realizing the full value of their investment.

The Problem
The organization was replacing an outdated financial system that had been in use for a long time. They had tried replacing the system earlier but cancelled the project when they realized that the system was not a good fit. Fallout from the canceled project and other organizational issues caused some resistance to the project from stakeholders.

Our engagement was to plan the new project and to address resistance and other relevant issues. We reported to a core team of four administration and extension office representatives who were the project leaders.

Here are some of the problems we found during the project:

• Feedback from the stakeholders after the cancellation of the earlier project was mixed: Some viewed it positively because they weren’t being forced to use a system that wasn’t a good fit. More stakeholders saw it negatively as a waste of resources.
• Many stakeholders were upset because they had limited involvement in the selection process.
• Many stakeholders wondered why there was a need to replace the system at all as they had used it for so long and they felt it worked fine.

The Challenge
There were some significant differences in the county extension offices across the state that would affect the success of the project. For example, some offices are large and have two or three full-time people with advanced degrees in finance or accounting, while smaller offices may only have one part-time person with varying amounts of finance or accounting experience. Both groups are the people who would be using the system the most as part of their jobs.

Those with less experience or without academic degrees felt more threatened by the new system and many were worried about their ability to keep their jobs. The more experienced people and those with academic credentials wanted to get on the new system as soon as possible and didn’t need or want much training or support.

The differences between the large and small offices also carried over to other stakeholders but were not as pronounced as with the finance and accounting people.

The Approach
We performed the following activities of this project over a two month period:

• Held several meetings with the core team to set and manage expectations, and to derive relevant information about the previous and new projects
• Interviewed a subset of stakeholders to elicit concerns that would affect the project and to determine the types of communication products all stakeholders would need during the project, including information addressing their concerns
• Worked closely with the vendor implementing the system to identify risks and to build the project plan with the appropriate tasks for the client to perform

The Solution
The solution was developing three planning documents that the core team would use as the project leaders throughout the project:

• Extensive communication plan with stakeholder analysis, a detailed matrix that mapped topics to each stakeholder group, and a description of the content deliverables, including their medium and delivery
• Detailed risk management plan
• Flexible project plan

The Results
All three planning documents were received with great appreciation and enthusiasm, as the organization was not used to having such detailed planning. The implementation was completed on time and on budget. The new system was well received by stakeholders.

Testimonial
“The communication plan was especially useful as it helped us prepare and implement all the recommended communications throughout the project. The stakeholders were more on board with the new system, and they appreciated getting the specific information they needed to integrate the system into their jobs without a lot of hassle and downtime.”

Conclusion
Good quality project planning, especially for communication and risk, helps a project start out on the right track. Many projects fail, not because they don’t have good project managers, or good project execution, but because planning is rushed, if done at all, and stakeholders’ expectations aren’t identified and managed.

The Problem
The regional municipality’s Responsive Region Improvement Team managed a portfolio of projects that were not bringing a lot of value to the municipality. There was no process for assessing the value of the projects that were submitted.

The Challenge
Project selection could be difficult due to organizational politics, “salesmanship,” self-interest of project sponsors, and other negative influences affecting which projects were selected and why. This often resulted in:

• Projects that were not always aligned with the municipality’s strategy
• Pet projects that brought value to an individual, but not necessarily to the organization
• Resources that were stretched thin, forcing people to work long hours

As the municipality had recently enacted an accountability and transparency mandate, the team was looking for a way to avoid the negative influences that affected project selection and meet the requirements of the new mandate.

The Approach
We conducted our research and customization approach over an elapsed time of one month, which consisted of these activities:

• Reviewed strategic and other internal documents provided by the team to identify the criteria for assessing the value, challenges, and priorities of projects
• Interviewed and worked with members of the team to verify the criteria
• Customized the assessment tool with the project selection criteria
• Worked with the team to load the current projects in the portfolio into the assessment tool

The Solution
The customized assessment tool allowed the team to view a dashboard of the current projects in their portfolio and to be better prepared for next year’s project selection process when new projects would be proposed.

The Results
After the team loaded the legacy projects into the assessment tool, the dashboard showed that most of the projects scored low to moderate on the value (alignment to strategy) axis, with only one high-value project.

After those projects were completed at the end of the year, the team loaded new projects as they were submitted into the tool. They rejected low-value and extremely difficult projects and only accepted projects that better met the strategy of the municipality. The dashboard reflected a large difference in the two portfolios, with all projects scoring moderate to high on the value axis.

Testimonial
“Creating the scoring criteria produced revealing results that only could have been achieved by following Norveld’s deployment process, which I found to be straight-forward and logical.”

Conclusion
Our proprietary assessment tool and methodology allowed the team to create a solid defensible business case for the projects in the new portfolio in order to prioritize and expend resources to produce the highest value on ROI. It provided the transparency needed to ensure that the team directs its efforts and resources to best serve the residents of the region and to accurately reflect the regional council’s business plan.