Budget Shifting

With MSP, you can now:

• Allow auditable work flow based budget regulation / shifting between existing budget lines
• Integrate into SAP; automatically feed the PS/  FI module with a uniform, traceable, business aligned budget structure
• Ability to divert resources between budget line while maintaining a cap per organization unit / P&L
• Set a work flow driven automated process for funneling budget requirements  (from bottom to top)
• Set accountabilities of predefined role members that scrutinizes every line to assure alignment to the business needs
• Verify each investment meets the business objective and that every project meets its predefined checkpoints
• Set caps to profit and lose units
• Charge backs/ cost allocation and assignment
• Trace and audit the budget line managed by SAP with the project managed by MS-Project

Why MSP?

After the budget planning process is initiated, charged, approved, prioritized and the entire budget plan is approved, MSP integrates itself into the ERP systems to actively create the budget tree and maintain traceability. Once alignment and traceability is set between the budget line and the projects/releases/programs they represent, then online reports and KPIs are delivered (such as planned vs. actual, earned value; strategic alignment of the budget and operations and much more). MSP also reflects ad-hoc real-life changes such as budget shifting from other projects (and/or budget lines), merging budget lines and more.

Many ERP and budget planning tools facilitate managing the budget plans. Once the budget planning process terminates the traceability between the budget line, the capacity it covers and the project it funds is very hard to maintain. Classic budget planning systems do not usually take the business’ strategic goals (CPM) into account. Additionally it does not take the business case needed to justify the investment into account, nor does it manage the audit from initiation to the actual use.

MSP provides a unique bottom up approach based on the required management foundation that allows initiation, negotiations and careful approval of budget requests based on roles and accountability. 
MSP sets off the requirement gathering process by collecting initiations from dispersed units (thousands of initiations from across the globe).

MSP then sets an automated process (work flow based) that assigns accountability for all stake holders to these initiations. MSP uses an advanced algorithm for setting accountabilities, by binding the "Service Catalog" to roles and people (who are actually assigned to each role). This way, requirements are collected, provided with the high level Total Cost of Ownership (TCO), approved, prioritized, scheduled and tracked by accountable individuals.

The requirements initiated represent "budget lines," that later along the year act as a "parent" to the project now forming. The budget lines serve as “skeletons” that hold multiple projects and work packages. As an example multiyear projects may have several budget lines.