Two years ago, at Bank Przemysłowo-Handlowy, spreadsheets were the primary tool for planning, budgeting, and controlling. For a dynamically developing and growing bank, they became an obstacle to effective planning and budgeting. Fundamental changes were brought about by a specialized IT solution, the MPC system implemented by Codec Systems. Before the implementation of the planning, budgeting, and controlling system, planning tasks consumed more time and energy from hundreds of bank employees each year. After the merger of Bank Przemysłowo-Handlowy with Powszechny Bank Kredytowy, there was a sudden increase in the amount of data that needed to be processed. Currently, over one hundred bank units participate in the budgeting process. It is easy to imagine how complicated the planning process can be in such an extensive organization. Two years ago, a staff of analysts and management personnel from individual branches used spreadsheets, which were consolidated in the central controlling department to prepare the bank’s budget based on them. The budget, just like today, is created based on the development strategy formulated by the board. Its implementation largely depends on the reliability of the forecasts and analyses of the actual capabilities of individual retail branches of the bank. Without a central system
for information flow, the planning and budgeting process extended to nearly ten weeks. Working based on individual spreadsheets was backbreaking and fraught with many difficulties, the most important of which are worth mentioning:
– the necessity of manual consolidation of over one hundred separate calculations
– lack of system control over the timeliness of sending calculations from branches to headquarters
– inconsistency of data coming from branches
– numerous operational errors related to manual data processing by many people
– lack of connection in a single tool for communication and workflow in the budgeting process
– the necessity of including qualitative and quantitative data from various bank divisions in the manual data processing model
– huge workload for highly qualified staff
– high cost and time-consuming nature of the budgeting process.
The article comes from the magazine “e-Fakty” 5/2005.