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Crown Prosecution Service maximizes taxpayer value through financial insights
Zero-based budgeting approach helps put the right resources in place for burgeoning caseload
Time is value for the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and the taxpayers it serves as the principal authority for criminal prosecutions in England and Wales. In recent years, steadily growing volumes of disparate data and complex cases snowballed into grueling number-crunching activities. “We wanted to focus our time on adding value to the business, rather than spending so much time on the collation of data,” recalled Finance Director Chris Sharp. Anaplan enabled a zero-based budgeting approach, minimized manual workloads, and maximized efficiency at CPS.
If I were to describe Anaplan in one word, I’d say it’s transformational.Chris Sharp, Finance Director
Eliminated
significant time spent on data collection and collation
Greater
visibility and collaboration
Months
not years, between implementation and business impact
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) is the principal prosecuting authority in England and Wales. As a demand-led service, it has no discretion or influence over the number, type, or complexity of cases it receives, and the service handles every case with high standards to ensure timely justice. A notable uptick in the volume of complex cases meant that the finance team at CPS needed to rethink how they could better manage and optimize operational resources and processes.
Setting out to improve finance and operational modeling, CPS first embraced a platform approach for planning. In turn, they explored new technology options for planning, citing data security, quick implementations, and powerful modeling capabilities as chief technology requirements. “We recognized that a properly controlled cloud-based solution could ensure that our data was more secure in Anaplan than in spreadsheets,” shared Chris Sharp, Finance Director at CPS.
Working in tandem with Bedford Consulting, CPS implemented Anaplan for Finance and quickly saw speed improvements in its previous consolidation processes. Using the platform, CPS was able to produce plans that could be analyzed and refined in real time across the organization. Not only were Sharp and his team equipped with powerful scenario-planning capabilities, but they were now enabled to build the expertise needed in-house to maintain and enhance financial models.
Prior to implementing Anaplan for Finance, the CPS team spent significant time each month pulling together and collating data. With the platform, consolidating data became instantaneous, and resource allocation has greatly improved. “We’re able to determine the resources we need, and thereby we can plan to get the right workforce with the right level of qualifications in the right location at the right time,” Sharp explains.
Further, he reports that his team has experienced valuable benefits, including:
Sharp also credits the zero-based budgeting approach for resource planning, enabled by Anaplan, with giving his team the ability to prepare for an uncertain future. “Operating in a changing world, we’ve seen a shift in the type of cases we receive,” he explained. “With the Anaplan platform, we are able to accurately plan for that now.”
Keeping up in this environment requires the ability to forecast accurately and flexibly. For CPS, this meant having a state-of-the-art system that could grow and adapt to reflect future changes. With Anaplan for Finance, the CPS team now has scalable enterprise planning technology at their fingertips. “If I were to describe Anaplan in one word, I’d say it’s transformational,” Sharp concluded.
