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What do Gartner, Forrester, and IDC have in common? They all named Anaplan a planning leader.
As a result of the Anaplan model, at least 100 days a month is saved for all of the finance team.Edd Berry, Director of Finance Innovation, Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust
days of forecasting time saved every month
access to current financial data from across the organization eliminates silos
response to change is enabled by accurate, real-time data
Manchester University Hospital NHS Foundation Trust (MFT) has been at the forefront of medical innovation for more than three centuries. Today, the 30,000-person organization provides care for over one million people annually through ten hospitals and a network of clinical and community services.
Like many other organizations in the UK’s National Health Service (NHS), MFT is seeing patient demand for its services rise dramatically. “Growing patient numbers, backlogs from the pandemic, and high inflation have put additional pressure on the finite resources available to us,” explains Edd Berry, Director of Finance Innovation at MFT, “so planning is incredibly important to our organization. Our job is to make sure that we’re as efficient and effective as possible with the resources that we have.”
To deliver value to the public, MFT creates monthly financial forecasts for every hospital, department, and clinical service. Delays or errors during this process can negatively impact patient services.
“Our team of 100 financial experts would spend over three days collecting information from our core finance system, validating and then aggregating data before they could work on forecasts,” Berry recalls. “This approach was siloed and piecemeal, and the risk of mistakes was quite high.”
To accelerate and improve its forecasting process, MFT deployed the Anaplan platform. “Anaplan is an excellent tool and a real game-changer for MFT,” says Berry. “It feels like the equivalent of going from paper ledgers to spreadsheets — it’s that big a change, and it opens up lots of possibilities.”
Department heads and financial planners at MFT now input data directly into a centralized forecasting model in Anaplan. “What's really powerful about Anaplan is that everything is instantaneous,” reflects Berry. “Our finance team can just log straight into the system and see whether each department has submitted their figures, who might need a nudge, or if there are any issues that we should address before moving on to analysis.”
With Anaplan as the foundation for monthly forecasting, financial planners at MFT work much more efficiently. “As a result of the Anaplan model, at least 100 days a month is saved for all of the finance team,” explains Berry. “As well as helping us to produce monthly forecasts faster, Anaplan has made life much easier for our team by cutting out days of laborious assembly and data validation. Now, our experts can focus on analyzing the data and helping to improve efficiency and service.”
Moving to Anaplan has sparked a step-change in the way MFT builds forecasts and financial plans. “When we complete a planning cycle in Anaplan, we have immediate access to our organization’s financial position, from the hospital level up to the entire group,” explains Berry. “It’s that instantaneous ability to see the information that we never had before, and that’s really changed how we're able to work. Being able to access the data really quickly is priceless, particularly in today’s environment where we need to be responsive to many challenges.”
MFT is already looking forward to making further enhancements with Anaplan. “We’ve only just started on our Anaplan transformation,” says Berry. “As we expand our use of Anaplan across the organization and upskill our teams, we anticipate even greater efficiency and more opportunities to save.”
Edd Berry, Director of Finance Innovation, MFT: MFT is one of the largest acute providers of healthcare in the country for the NHS. We employ around about 30,000 staff and a turnover around about £2.6 billion. We provide services across the City of Manchester as well as Trafford.
Our job is to be as efficient and as productive as possible with the resources we've got to manage the services we deliver.
Our Anaplan forecasting model had a real material impact on how we work as a finance function. When the team were previously working for 3-4 days every month on this, they're now working around one day. We're able to save at least one-half, possibly two-thirds of their time. As a result of the Anaplan model, at least 100 days a month is saved for all of the finance team.
My favourite thing about Anaplan is how it's changed the way that we work. Previously we were very silo-based. People were working in different spreadsheets and you didn't know where you were until they've done their piece of work and then it's aggregated together and that takes time. What's really, really powerful about Anaplan is everything's instantaneous. You can just log straight into the system and you can see where people are up to. You can see whether that hospital has finished their task, has this one finished theirs, but you see the overall answer immediately. But it's that instantaneous ability to see the information that we never had before, and that's really changed how we're able to work.
I'm Edd Berry, and I'm the Director of Finance Innovation at Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust, and we plan with Anaplan.