For many management teams, establishing reliable personnel budgeting is the key to effective data-driven strategy and decision-making. However, ambitious plans for HR reporting often run aground due to fragmented source data and time-consuming, manual reconciliations.
Berm, a healthcare group that supports people with mental health challenges, solved this by automating its entire data architecture. With seven facilities in Bruges and Ypres and approximately 1,000 employees, they linked their Acerta payroll system directly to their reporting platform to feed management reports directly. The result is an integrated budgeting and reporting environment in which HR and finance now make decisions based on exactly the same, validated figures.
The need for an integrated approach
In a multi-site healthcare setting, consolidating HR data and financial information is a complex challenge. Berm’s management team ran into the limits of manual reporting and fragmented systems. The organization needed reliable management dashboards and HR analytics that could provide in-depth insights into the discrepancies between budget and reality, expressed in both full-time equivalents (FTE) and wage costs.
In addition, senior and middle management lacked the ability to accurately simulate in advance the financial and operational impact on staffing budgets of, for example, mid-year staffing changes, unforeseen absences, or the deployment of temporary staff. Access to a single centralized planning and budgeting platform was essential to address these challenges systematically.
Thanks to Aimplan, we are able to run real-time simulations in addition to using Power BI. This approach results in a powerful combination of visual dashboards and underlying calculation models, which is essential for data-driven budgeting and reporting.
The technical implementation: data architecture and healthcare-specific logic
To meet these needs, TriFinance has established a robust management reporting system for HR. Whereas traditional Business Intelligence is limited to visualizing historical data, the integration of Aimplan adds a crucial write-back functionality. This enables budget managers to directly enter data and run through scenarios within the familiar Power BI environment.
The project, launched in September 2025 and successfully completed in the spring of 2026, was implemented in three phases:
- The budgeting module: In the first phase, the focus was on building a multidimensional data platform in which the personnel budget is meticulously constructed per facility, cost center, function, and pay scale. This immediately gave the organization better insight into its own operational complexity.
- Integration of actuals: Next, the budget was linked to a new reporting environment in Power BI to enable automatic variance analyses based on frequent data loads from Acerta. This allowed for faster detection and analysis of deviations.
- Forecasting tool with healthcare logic: The final step was the delivery of a forecasting module in Aimplan where budget managers can adjust their FTE forecasts on a monthly basis. Within this model, the full complexity of the healthcare sector—including pay scales, seniority, and the intricate legislation surrounding work exemptions—is logically programmed.
We have centralized the data and streamlined the varying practices across the seven healthcare facilities within a single universal data model. This gives management the assurance that every figure is interpreted identically across the board.
A pragmatic collaboration
The transition to an innovative reporting and budgeting tool required a fundamental shift in how the organization thought about data and reporting. TriFinance brought a targeted combination of financial, HR, and data expertise to the table. By maintaining an intensive on-site presence and acting as a critical sparring partner, the consultants succeeded in translating complex issues step by step into workable, pragmatic solutions.
Tight project governance with weekly status meetings ensured that the process remained transparent, meticulous, and within budget. Furthermore, a targeted program of Power BI training and knowledge transfer ensured that Berm’s internal staff and key users would eventually be able to manage and expand the reporting environment completely independently.
The consultants at TriFinance combined technical expertise with a deep understanding of our situation. They succeeded in providing clear, feasible solutions, step by step, to a complex data challenge.
Real added value: from data to strategic HR management
The implementation of the new reporting and simulation tool has led to a fundamental professionalization of HR reporting and decision-making at Berm. The real added value for the management team is immediately apparent at both the strategic and operational levels:
- A single source of truth: HR and finance now work with exactly the same, validated figures. This breaks down the traditional silos between the two departments and ensures maximum transparency and consistency across all seven facilities.
- In-depth insight and detailed steering: Executive management and supervisors now can make decisions at the granular level. Labor costs, FTEs, and funding sources can be closely tracked down to the level of the specific position, department, and cost center.
- Aligned organizational culture: Work methods and processes across the various sites are successfully aligned thanks to uniform management reporting.
- Proactive and strategic HR policy: Thanks to forecasting and real-time simulation capabilities, the organization is much better equipped to respond to future challenges in the healthcare sector. Policy decisions regarding strategic workforce planning and budgeting are no longer based on assumptions, but on hard, substantiated data.
With this approach, Berm has taken a crucial step toward data-driven decision-making. The organization is so satisfied with the results achieved and the collaboration that it has now also entrusted TriFinance with optimizing its financial reporting
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