Pekin Hospital Automates Budget Process with IDEA Budget Solution

Pekin Hospital, a 125 bed facility in Pekin, Illinois, is known for its dedication to personalized, quality healthcare for its patients.  In fact, the hospital has been recognized nationally for its exceptional patient satisfaction survey results.  This dedication to the customer extends to the Finance Department as well.  The Finance Department’s challenge was to find a way to improve the budget process, making it faster and more efficient for its customers:  the department managers of the hospital.CHALLENGE:  To automate and streamline the budget process, while still encouraging the managers of the hospital to take ownership of their own budgets.

• Pekin Hospital’s old method of distributing budgets consisted of sending out spreadsheets via email and manually collecting and entering the data. 
• The hospital needed a cost effective budgeting product that would be user friendly and allow them to reduce the time it took to prepare, distribute, and collect the budget information from all of the department managers.
• The budgeting software also had to work well with the hospital’s current general ledger and payroll systems, making the uploading and downloading of data easy and efficient.

• IDEA Budget Solution® was easy for the Finance Department to implement and maintain. 
• Distribution of budgets to the managers was a quick, automated process, with no emailing necessary.
• The worksheets in which the managers entered their budgets were very user friendly.
• Reporting, including roll-up facility level reports, was readily available.
• The cost of the product was extremely reasonable compared to other vendors that were researched by Pekin Hospital.

“We chose IDEA Budget Solution® because it was so user-friendly.  The budget worksheets were so easy to use that they made perfect sense to our non-finance user base.”

Kelly Belless, Senior Accountant, Pekin Hospital

DELIVERING THE SOLUTION:  IDEA Consulting Group was able to implement the product quickly and painlessly in a short period of time.

• While IDEA Budget Solution® has many useful standard features, the consultants were also able to customize certain areas to specifically meet Pekin Hospital’s needs.
• Although Pekin Hospital had a very aggressive implementation time frame, IDEA Consulting Group was able to accommodate the hospital’s time schedule.

• The automated distribution process saved time and there was no longer a need to email files back and forth.
• The review process was greatly improved since the budget worksheets were automatically aggregated whenever needed and entity level reports could be quickly pulled.
• The stored comments field and the ability to require vendor level line item detail for certain accounts added a whole new layer of information to the budget process.

“We are extremely pleased with IDEA Budget Solution.  It was easy to implement, easy to learn, and easy to train the managers.  Our budget process has been significantly improved, and we have saved significant labor hours.”

Kelly Belless, Senior Accountant, Pekin Hospital.

SPOTLIGHT ON PEKIN HOSPITAL: Pekin Hospital serves the Tazewell, Mason and Peoria Counties of Illinois.  The hospital works closely with approximately 250 physicians in more than 25 medical specialties.  Pekin Hospital is licensed by the State of Illinois Department of Public Health and accredited by the Joint Commission.