Stakeholder Cost Reporting (SCR)

Click SCR above to view how it can work for you

Stakeholder Cost Reporting (SCR) persists Innovation, from the point of data capture and validation, to the reporting of data by doing the following:

• SCR provides meaningful information to different levels of the organization with the same data, but tactical data which is typically more granular that strategic data is used at the operational level to drive operational efficiency, while strategic data is used at the executive level to manage corporate vision.
• SCR creates a digital document strategy to minimize costs associated with manual paper records, systems, human resources and professional audit services.
• SCR provides a blue sky view of programs and projects as well as instant access to cost detail down to the source document.
• SCR establishes a business process for every data type captured and reported. The process is well documented and easy to maintain by people that require little training. The process also deploys a segregation of duties, authorization accountability, continuous audit trails and automatic tracking reports for individuals with duties, to monitor and process their items as required.   
• SCR impacts the enterprise integration strategy, by allowing smaller organizational units to adopt a “Best of Breed “ (BOB) application strategy while fulfilling the data requirements of an ERP system. SCR facilitates BOB by ensuring that “islands of data” have a single source of data that is shared by all systems, including the data requirements of the corporate integrated business system. The investment in integration can remain at the core of the organization where change is minimal, while the BOB approach can be implemented out in the Business Units where change is rapid and continuous.
• SCR facilitates a flat organizational structure with powerful reporting features that create a transparent team environment. When transparency is used with well defined business process, team politics are minimized and people tend to focus on their specific job which improves performance of the whole team.
• SCR facilitates cost allocation procedures that are uniquely designed and consistently applied to meet current reporting requirements.

Operational people work with the tactical data they know well and technology tools they understand, while executive personnel are empowered with the same data, but categorized in a manner that optimizes their need for strategic data.

Capture all documents in digital format, transfer data from documents to a database, validate the data with those people responsible for managing corporate resources, and create audit trails to maximize accountability and corporate governance.

The next step is sharing of the data in a specific way with each stakeholder. This approach to sharing data works well for small growing organizations with rapidly changing needs, as well as larger organizations that are organized into Business Units (BU). Each BU can now more effectively compete in the market place with the nimbleness of a small company, maximize operational efficiency by working with special purpose meaningful data, while exploiting the advantages typically associated with large organizations, and pass the same data but categorized for the next level of the organization operations with no effort. The next level is now empowered to operate in their most efficient manner and the efficiencies at each level of the organization continue all the way to the top executive level.

Advantages of providing the right data in a format suitable for the appropriate decision making level of users are:

• each BU can use verticals preferred by users of the day, including that recommended by HO; .
• highly paid professionals are more effective with readily accessible and validated data.

As a final comment about sharing data, SCR imports data from other systems and exports data to be used by other systems. The data is currently maintained in Microsoft Access and we are currently in the middle of creating an SQL version of SCR as well, so other applications can tap into SCR data files without an export/import step. It is the philosophy of sharing data that makes SCR a powerful tool for any and every organization.

The reporting feature in SCR, although very conventional in the sense that graphs have been around for a long time, is very innovative in the way that old ideas are used in new ways. SCR was designed to support the project management of high dollar value programs comprised of 100's of concurrent projects by using cost curves.

SCR's simple and elegant presentation of organized chaos epitomizes the phrase "A picture is worth a thousand words". Now you can:

• See all costs instantly, budget costs, daily field costs, committed costs and invoiced to date costs
• View the health and progress of a project instantly and manage by exception while monitoring 100’s of project in a day.
• Drill down to detailed data in a digital format with ease and use the power of digital data as never before.
• Analyze the data with commonly used spreadsheet technology on your desktop or smart phone

 In the example above, each line represents data of a specific nature that is collected and validated, based on a specific business process unique to the current requirements. A project glitch is rapidly apparent when the lines do not properly align, in which case, immediate investigation down to the source documents retained in SharePoint and instant remedial action is possible via Outlook.

In the example above, each line represents data of a specific nature that is collected and validated, based on a specific business process unique to the current requirements. A project glitch is rapidly apparent when the lines do not properly align, in which case, immediate investigation down to the source documents retained in SharePoint and instant remedial action is possible via Outlook.

SCR has been used to monitor and initiate corrective action for over 400 active projects in Canada while the user was traveling on the other side of the globle. It is fabulous to be so empowered with information while on the other side of the globe, and a testament to the extent of change in business practice that is driving us to be more efficient with our time and resources.

Stakeholders can update project status while inspecting progress of projects in remote areas, or monitor financial metrics while stuck in a traffic jam simply using a Microsoft Mobile enabled cellular device.

To date, SCR has been used by an engineering company to track progress and monitor construction costs of oilfield facilities, an international affordable housing company capable of creating a high quality house a day on a proprietary production line, and an international agriculture consulting firm helping countries to increase food production and access humanitarian programs.