Solution Overview

Capital Expenditure planning can be a complex and protracted procedure. The process often involves the manual preparation of multiple project cost projections and the consolidation of these to report projected costs at a reporting entity level which typically also involve several levels of authorizations and sign-offs.

Key Challenges

Oracle estimate that 70% of capital budgeting, forecasting and planning is still performed in large organizations using spreadsheets. The reliance on manual controls and spreadsheets makes consolidation/reporting time-consuming and error-prone and virtually ensures that cost projections are not based on the latest operational plans. The following are common issues that arise in the Capital Expenditure Planning process:

• Duplication of data entry
• Unnecessary overheads and complexity
• Costly escalation delays
• Decaying accuracy
• Manual approval processes & reconciliation

Capital Exependiture StartPoint Solution

The i-nexus Capital Expenditure software solution provides a single, real-time environment in which the activities which form the capital expenditure planning and investment process can be consolidated.

i-nexus provides the capabilities to:

• Define and maintain budgetary targets for capital and expense expenditure per organizational unit. Leverage best practice project methodologies to accelerate planning of major capital investment projects
• Dramatically simplify the planning of smaller capital investment projects whilst maintaining the ability to report actual/projected expenditure and progress in a consistent way across the capital investment portfolio
• Prepare an investment appraisal/capital appropriation request and route this electronically for approval
• Create a baseline forecast the projected profile of capital expenditure over time at the point the expenditure is approved
• Capture and track actual and committed capital expenditure (including sourcing this information from external 3 party systems e.g. SAP/Oracle) on a periodic basis e.g. synchronized with a monthly reporting event. (Excel Import or Web Service Integration)
• Re-forecast the projected capital expenditure to project completion as part of a periodic e.g. monthly reporting event
• Compare aggregate forecast and actual capital expenditure with agreed budget/capital allocation at a project, portfolio and reporting entity level
• Ability to manage the project schedule, collect progress on tasks and capture commentary and to automatically modify the cost projections as milestone dates change

Capital Expenditure StartPoint Solution Benefits

Organizations adopting the i-nexus Capital Expenditure Software StartPoint solution are frequently astounded at how easy it is to deploy and use. i-nexus helps to reduce the manual effort required in the capital expenditure planning process and automate the controlling process, consequently reducing the inherent risks associated with preparing capital expenditure forecasts.

Click here to view the Capital Expenditure StartPoint Solution Briefing