Senior Living Group: How the controlling department can become a business partner

Why TriFinance

At TriFinance | MI&S we guarantee an excellent mix between implementation and advice. Not only a listening ear, but the do-how approach of the TriFinance projects ensured that we could start this project at SLG.

The challenge & approach

SLG registers dozens of KPIs (financial, operational and HR) in a CPM tool, from which the daily and monthly reporting was built up via linked excel sheets.

Given the large number of KPIs, it was not always easy to see the forest for the trees. The controlling team always had a strong challenge to share these figures on time with the various stakeholders.

The most important KPIs were presented graphically based on 40 interactive dashboards, with the option of grouping or refining them depending on the target audience. This more graphical way of presenting ensures that exceptions are noticed faster and that the drivers behind the financial figures are made visible.

Evolutions over time as well as correlations between different KPIs are also brought up in these dashboards. These dashboards are linked to the existing CPM tool and are automatically updated so that they always contain the most up-to-date data.

A necessary step for the controlling team to evolve into a fully-fledged business partner

The stakeholders themselves consult their dashboards so controlling can focus more on the analysis and discussion of the figures, instead of the report creation and distribution. Building this Power BI environment was a necessary step for the controlling team to evolve into a fully-fledged business partner.

Since the process is now automated, there is a huge time saving for the controllers so that they can talk to the different management levels about their performance. This has become a much more interesting story because the dashboards are much more visual than the earlier tables. Also, trend lines have been added and comparisons between the sites are possible as a benchmark.

Because the controllers have more time to analyze and talk to the business, further elaboration will be possible in the field of operational reports in the future. This can be realized on the same platform and within the setup data structure. Not only has the project been delivered, but also the new reporting is embedded in the organization.

Big thanks to our mixed team of junior and senior consultants who were active on this project, which resulted in a nice cross-fertilization between the consultants to arrive at the best possible reporting design.

By working together, pooling knowledge and experience, and also relying on our best practices, all challenges during the project could be solved.