FORS Group
FORS implements a system of financial planning and budgeting at “Medicine” JSC
FORS announces the development and start of industrial operation of a system for budget planning, cash-flow control and managerial accounting at OAO “Meditsina”. Based on tender carried out by the customer, FORS received the right to implement a complex “Business Intelligence” solution specifically developed for medical institutions targeting their key requirements in the field of financial management. Oracle technologies and business applications were used as the platform, including Oracle Database, Oracle Business Intelligence Suite and Oracle Hyperion planning.
OAO “Meditsina” today is the only clinic in our country accredited by Joint Commission International and certified in accordance with international standards of quality management ISO 9001:2008. The clinic received a “5 star” rating by the European Fund of Quality Management (EFQM), is a member of Swiss Leading Hospitals Association, etc. In 2010, OAO “Meditsina” won the award of the Russian Federation Government for quality. As one of the oldest private medical institutions in Russia, it currently is a leading diversified medical center with its own building, modern equipment and large professional staff. OAO “Meditsina” aims to be a leader in the field of using information technologies and was one of the pioneers in introducing medical information systems in Russia.
With the view of further development of the program platform covering financial accounting and reporting of the clinic, it was decided to carry out a project for the integration of existing information sources and creation of a unified management accounting system based on the data warehouse, cost control and payment management systems. To meet these requirements FORS developed a comprehensive specialized solution customized specifically for medical institutions and consisting of several functional subsystems. They can be implemented either separately or as a complete comprehensive solution. The latter approach was used in this particular project.
The core of the system is an analytical data warehouse based on Oracle Database 11g. Data is uploaded from 4 external heterogeneous information systems, i.e. medical, accounting, HR/remuneration and facilities.
These consolidated data are used by the following components of the integrated solution:
- Financial planning subsystem based on an industrial solution for integrated business planning, budgeting and forecasting, Oracle Hyperion Planning. The works included creating of an accounting and financial policy, formalization of rules, design, automation, preparing documentation and education.
- Payments management solution based on FORS standard solution customized and adapted according to the customer’s needs.
- Management accounting subsystem based on the classical approach to implementing data warehouses using Oracle BI tools. For this purpose all data sources were analyzed, data warehouse structure was designed and Oracle BI semantic model was determined.
The project was launched in January 2011 and was completed within 6 months. From July to October of 2011 the system was in trial operation.
The main difficulty of the project lay in the necessity of creating a consolidated budgeting methodology base, adding various analytical aspects and integrating heterogeneous data.
Consolidating accounting, medical and other information systems ensured proper cash flow control from the point of view of financial management, analysis of profit distribution by various articles of the budget as well as calculation of actual and projected profitability.
In the process of project execution we created 10 subject fields,5 information panels and 15 analytical reports; integrated 4 heterogeneous data sources using Firebird, Sybase and 1C technologies for their databases.
It is important to note that the customer demonstrated avid interest in meeting the goals, actively participated in project management, helped solve key problems at stages of implementation and gave absolute support to FORS developers and consultants.
Financial Director of OAO “Meditsina” Vadim Vishnyakov says, “The main result of the project was the successful creation of a unified data warehouse on the basis of heterogeneous sources which now can be used for building necessary management reporting. The project allowed us to take financial planning and budgetary control to a new level – we have obtained a reliable and convenient tool to analyze and monitor the clinic’s financial health using consolidated data from all existing information systems. The implementation of this system will allow us to optimize financial management of the clinic which, in its turn, will allow us to fulfil our plans of further developing the clinic”.
In the future the system will be further developed in various directions, namely analytical demonstration of data on main activities, creation of new forms of regulatory and analytical reporting for financial activities, as well as a reference data model adapted to Russian realities and specificity of local medical institutions, development of information panels for the top management and ensuring compliance with the international JCI standard.
FORS has broad experience in automation solutions for healthcare. The company’s portfolio includes a number of customized industry-specific products, among them integration solutions for intra-hospital interaction and FORS’ own system for automated management of a healthcare institution.