The Watergroup (formerly known as Vlaamse Maatschappij voor Watervoorziening or Flemish society for Water supply) was looking to structure the existing budgeting process, that was mainly spreadsheet-driven, into an application that would both provide more automatisation and user friendliness. In addition the Watergroup was also looking for a flexible solution that could support the current allocation model of costs and revenues within its services. And not only the budgeting process must be supported but also the budget monitoring and the management reporting must be supported by the tool. Given the integration capabilities and the Microsoft strategy that the company follows, the choice felt on SAP BPC for the Microsoft Platform. This software is fully integrated within the MS Office suite and makes use of the full SQL Server platform, both for the database as the analytical component (OLAP). Based on some workshops, a prototype was built that could be evaluated by the functional users. This methodology has the advantage that fairly quickly in the implementation process results are realized that can be compared against the needs of the users. The prototype was further refined and resulted in a final application. The application structure contains the notion budget holder so that the origin of each budgeted figure can be retrieved. Both for the budget as for the real figures, the BPC allocation model allows that costs and revenues always are encrypted correctly. For the ICT department an additional feature was provided so that the ICT projects can be followed in detail, from the granting to the realization.
