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Archive - Edition 2: Reporting
Leading Article
Current Trends in Reporting
Content
- Creating Reporting Structures through Information Modeling
- Structured versus Unstructured Information
Information Visualization
- Orion – A Visual Approach to Business Analytics
- Knowledge Reporting with InfoZoom®
- Making the Truth Visible – Visual Design of Visual Reporting Tools
Selected Portals
Links & More
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Related Links |
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The Budget Manager Portal Revisited – Putting User-Centered Methods to Action |
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Brand Manager |
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Line Manager |
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Budget Manager Portal
By Ralph-Peter Rembor, Christine Wiegand, and Gerd Waloszek, SAP AG – December 22, 2000
Disclaimer: Please note that this edition was written in 2000. Therefore, statements in the articles, particularly those regarding SAP's products, product strategy, branding strategy, and organizational structure, may no longer be valid.
The following article presents the Budget Manager Portal, a Greenfield project aiming to support a management position in the public sector, namely the budget manager. mySAP Public Sector comprises solutions for governmental institutions ranging from federal, to state and local agencies, as well as higher education and research institutions, the whole education area K-12, and state-owned companies.
The Budget Manager Role
When defining the role of the budget manager, the development team took a closer look at the roles in the public sector in general and defined a 3-by-3 matrix scheme: One axis comprised the three hierarchy levels typical for the public sector, official in charge (lower level), expert (medium level), and manager (higher level). The other axis comprised the functions Budgeting, Departments (for example, the ministries), and Treasury (cash management). The budget manager occupies the upper left cell of this matrix:
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Budgeting
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Departments
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Treasury
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Budget Manager
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Expert |
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Official in Charge |
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Figure 1: Roles in the public sector
One of the major tasks of the budget manager, who leads the budgeting department, is the budgeting. When the budget is drawn up for the new fiscal year, he has to decide which budget he can demand for his organization; these values depend on governmental regulations, the economic situation and – still too often – the previous budget. Moreover, the budget manager is responsible for the budget control in his department, that is, he checks the execution of the budget. This is where reporting, this edition's topic, comes into play: He uses reports to find out how much of the budget was spent by the different funds centers and compares these expenses with his own estimates: He performs plan-actual comparisons and checks whether a supplementary budget or even blocking is needed.
MiniApps for Supporting the Budget Manager's Tasks
In this portal project the development team tried to integrate as much external content from the Internet as possible. Therefore, integration of reporting data was not the primary focus of the team. In the following we describe how the most important tasks of the budget managers are supported by the portal's MiniApps and what the plans for the future are. These MiniApps reside in the "Budgeting" view of the portal, which is shown below.
Figure 2: The Budget Manager Portal – click for a larger image
Establishing the Budget
Statistics MiniApps
Internet content is primarily needed in the budgeting area. For this purpose the portal offers two MiniApps presenting statistical data:
- Information showing the economic development is presented in a statistics MiniApp. It displays a US map which integrates statistical information for the different regions in the US, for example, how unemployment is distributed over the regions and years, or how the gross national product is developing.
- This demographic data helps in ascertaining the expected tax income. A second
MiniApp showing trend charts for the tax income of certain regions helps the
budget manager to inspect and forecast tax data.
In addition there is a lot of other important statistical data. For example, statistics relevant in education organizations are data about the yearly birthrates, which strongly influence the budget for the education area.
Figure 3: A map allows the budget manager to access statistical and demographic data for the different regions in the US
Figure 4: Trend charts permit estimation of the tax revenues for different regions in the US
Schedule MiniApp
The budget manager's tasks are often connected with a short period of time only – similar to projects. For example, there is a fixed schedule for the political debate of a budget. The portal offers a schedule MiniApp for monitoring time-dependent tasks using a timeline. It shows the budget manager's To Do's, with red, yellow, and green bubbles indicating the current status of the tasks. Clicking a bubble reveals textual information giving the budget manager the details of the respective task and its deadline. The development team plans to introduce active texts with underlying actions, like sending an e-mail, opening a text document, or calling up an R/3 transaction.
Figure 5: The schedule MiniApp helps the budget manager to oversee the time schedule for his tasks
Information MiniApp for Laws and Regulations
An immense number of laws and regulations have to be observed for the budgeting. There may, for example, be a regulation saying that office supplies need not be budgeted, because they are obtained centrally. The portal offers a MiniApp supporting the budget manager in this task, too. The MiniApp is intended to integrate Web content derived from external data bases, for example, one which has information on the personnel budgeting. Negotiations with a publisher are under-way. The team handed over a role description and a list of keywords to the publisher to check whether he could offer sufficient content.
Figure 6: This MiniApp provides access to laws and regulations important for the budget manager
Forms
In addition, the development team negotiates with another publisher who sells forms for the public sector; among these are forms for internal use. This publisher also plans to create a database with content which is useful for budget managers. This data will complement the forms with context-specific information, as there are new regulations as well as instructions for filling out the forms.
Electronic Records Management
The development team plans to integrate an "electronic records management" component into the portal, that is, an electronic document administration that combines workflow and document management. Typically, a workflow goes through the administration, and at every step the respective official in charge adds new components to the document (such as a Word document, or scanned documents). Record models determine how a document has to be processed and during which steps a particular document has to be added. Thus, each step requires the addition of certain content. It would be very helpful for the officials in charge, if they could access a content database that offers the respective "knowledge packages" and instructions.
Budget Control
The departments spend funds, for example reserve funds for procurements which are to be purchased in the future (for long-term projects). On the other hand, they also buy things like office supplies, for which they are immediately billed. The majority of employees work in individual departments while the budgeting and cash office areas are much smaller. Therefore these individual departments or ministeries generally have their own controlling.
The budget manager has to check how much of the budget is spent by the different funds centers; generally he will focus on higher-level funds centers. There are always "critical" positions, that tend to strain their budgets. Therefore, the portal offers a report in a MiniApp displaying 5 to 6 critical positions, thus providing a quick check for the budget manager. It is important to note that the budget manager is not interested in "global" data but needs a split into value types: He needs to know which items have already been paid, for which items there are only unpaid bills, where the funds have been committed, or where he has just set a "marker", that is, made a reservation.
Figure 7: This MiniApp displays the budget consumption of critical cost centers – click image for larger version
Alerts - Alert MiniApp
As in most portals, critical information is displayed in an alert MiniApp. For example, an alert indicates that 95% of the budget of a certain account has already been spent.
Figure 8: An alert MiniApp informs the budget manager about critical events
There are plans to connect the alert MiniApp to the R/3 availability check. This availability check allows you to set percentage levels and offers three levels of corresponding actions: (1) The user receives a warning, (2) he or she receives a warning and the responsible manager receives a mail informing him that X% of the budget has been spent (X according to the customizing settings), (3) a severe error is issued and a mail is sent to the responsible manager; in this case, the processor cannot post the bill or reserve the budget. The team plans to display the mails created in this process within the alert MiniApp.
Blockings present another problem which might be solved by the alert MiniApps. Blockings are issued by higher-level administrations, and may, for example, say that for a certain date certain funds can no longer be used. Technically, a funds blocking is posted – however, the blocking is posted in a different system to the one the budget manager is using. Therefore, he does not notice in his own system if a blocking has been posted somewhere on a higher level. To overcome this problem, the team plans to make such events automatically issue high priority mails, that appear as alerts in the alert MiniApp of the budget manager portal.
Alerts might also indicate that new regulations have been issued and present important mails provided by news feeders.
Figure 9: A MiniApp for displaying budgeting news
Structure of the Portal
The Views - Contexts of Work
Tabs give access to views which support the budget manager in his different work contexts:
- Budgeting: He uses this view for budgeting
- Controlling: He uses this view while active in Budget Control
- Management: He himself is a manager; he leads a team and needs specific functions for this, for example for controlling the budget of his cost center (not implemented)
- Employee: He himself is an employee and needs, for example, the option to apply for a vacation (not implemented)
- Mail (not implemented)
- Private: "Private" information, like news, weather, pictures of family members ...
- Home: Starting page which he enters at the beginning of each work day; this is a "Best-of" page composed of MiniApps from other views – that is, a personal collection of MiniApps from all work contexts
Figure 9: The tabs for accessing the different work contexts of the budget manager
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Figure 10-11: Previews of the Home and Private view - click images for a larger view.
Management, Employee, and Mail are generic functions, which may appear in many portals in a similar fashion. The newest showcase of the portal offers a personalizing function for the Home view. Here all the MiniApps from the different works contexts are available and can be "dragged" onto the Home view.
Launchpads
The launchpads of the different views are adapted to the specific work contexts; for example, the launchpad for Budgeting offers three main areas
- Master Data
- Planning
- Budget Control
Expanding these areas leads to the specific functions within these areas, like Maintain Original Budget for Planning. Different reports are offered in the Controlling part. Master Data offers functions which allow the budget manager, for example, to create new funds centers and to determine the managers responsible.
Office Integration
The newest version of the Budget Manager Portal integrates Microsoft Excel, to support calculations of budget values. The budget manager may display a report which allows comparison of the actual data and the budget data of the current and the previous year.
Document Administrator
The Document Administrator originating in the Knowledge Warehouse is a MiniApp for people who frequently use office products, that is, create text documents or presentations. Via this MiniApp they can display and access frequently used documents.
Figure 12: The "Document Administrator" MiniApp
TRex Search Engine
The new SAP TRex search engine is intended for searching for laws and regulations. Even better would be an alert mechanism which indicates the addition of a new document to a data source.
Customer Feedback and New Trends
The Budget Manager Portal has already been presented to prospective customers and provoked mixed reactions. In Germany, people still have problems with the concept of an electronic workplace; they fear that social interaction might suffer. In Switzerland the portal was applauded, but customers felt they were not yet prepared for introducing such a new concept to their organizations. Customers in the US, however, showed a great interest in the Budget Manager Portal.
Citizen Portals
Citizen portals are currently in demand. The development team is creating such a portal ("City of e") in parallel to the Budget Manager Portal. Citizen Portals are based on findings showing that people access such a portal not with the intent of surfing around, but for a specific reason. Therefore, these portals are organized around "life events", like marriage or licensing a car.
New Public Management
For several years, a reform movement has been under way called "New Public Management." It offers a new approach to budgeting that emphasizes the output and not the input of resources. Its intention is not to debate whether departments may get 3% or 5% more budget in the next fiscal year, but to debate, which goals they want to achieve in the next fiscal year and which products and services the administration has to offer to achieve these goals. A goal may, for example, be to offer 10% more consultations for people addicted to drugs next year, not to get 8% more budget. In other words, the departments discuss products and services, that is, the output of the administration, and derive from this which budget they need for the next fiscal year to realize this output.
The R/3 controlling allows you to map products, services, and projects to CO internal orders. Business Information Warehouse reports display the results and allow comparison of internal orders (the output) with budget management data. The budget manager could compare during the execution how expenditures and output match. On the other hand, once this approach has succeeded, he would need a presentation which clearly shows, how many products have been planned (CO planning reports) in order to derive the necessary budgets from this information.
Conclusions
As with all Greenfield projects the Budget Manager Portal is primarily a feasibility study. It investigates which components are needed for a budget manager to perform his tasks effectively, and how these elements can be combined efficiently. The first design already provided important insights and produced many new ideas. As the interest from prospective customers in this project indicates, a "real" product with the respective functionality would tap the pulse of the market. Therefore, the team is willing to migrate the concept to a standard mySAP Workplace solution with the next release.
