Finnish Red Cross reduces budgeting and planning process by 50%

In addition to donations, many different organizations co-fund the domestic and international operations of the Finnish Red Cross (FRC). Typically, each partner has different formulas for reporting on projects and multiple income statement requirements in unique formats. Project managers in-house also need to prepare budgets for internal reporting but, historically, had to spend considerable time generating reports. This cumbersome process included financial controllers managing and creating hundreds of separate budgets and forecasts across the FRC’s multiple districts, activities, and funding sources.

Viena Loire-Pohjakallio, Head of Finance, remembers the process: “It was extremely challenging for our finance team, as we had to support multiple plans and forecasts using only standard Excels, which can quickly become error-prone through multiple re-uses.” It was clear that the team needed a better budgeting, planning, and forecasting system to help ease this workload and ensure that the Finnish Red Cross continued demonstrating good stewardship of its funds. It was also crucial that any future solution would support the team in cross-team collaboration and offer a user-friendly user interface (UI).

After considering five different budgeting and forecasting systems, the Finnish Red Cross (FRC) selected Jedox. “We were particularly impressed by the capabilities of the Jedox solution,” explained Loire-Pohjakallio. The FRC ordered 200 licenses and worked with CGI, a leading Jedox partner in Finland and across the Nordic region, to deploy the solution across its operations.

With Jedox in place, the Finnish Red Cross (FRC) has cut the time spent on budgeting in half, and the team now has a real-time perspective of the organization’s end-to-end planning, budgeting, and forecasting processes. Before Jedox, it would take the team so much time to pull data together that it didn’t have a pulse on the process in real time. Instead of pulling data into Excel, the team is now more focused on strategic planning and no longer has to worry about data quality due to errors.

The finance team can spend more time focused on strategic planning rather than processing cumbersome Excel-based budgets. There have been significant productivity improvements thanks to the integration capabilities and power of the Jedox solution, from importing key data into Jedox to rapid resolution of internal billings through the Jedox allocation model.

Ensuring the highest standards of financial stewardship is essential for a not-for-profit organization such as the Finnish Red Cross (FRC). The solution provided by Jedox and implemented in partnership with CGI has helped the FRC’s finance operations to keep pace with its complex budgeting requirements, meeting escalating demands for more information while ensuring compliance with regulations.