Valentina Berezina: with Prestima budgeting became simple and clear

Valentina Berezina: Giprogaztsentr develops, together with growth of the organization also the volume of payments increases. There was a need for formation of the payment schedule and operating control of compliance of payments to the budget. Also budgeting of income and expenses (income and expense budget), carrying out the plan-fact analysis and preparation of the reporting for parent organization – JSC Gazprom became complicated.

Before implementation of a CPM system as the instrument of budgeting we used the office application of Excel, but spreadsheets did not allow to obtain up-to-date information timely. Therefore at the end of 2011 we began to study systems for budgeting process automation.

TAdviser: In IT market the broad spectrum of the systems solving budgeting tasks why you selected Prestima is provided?

Valentina Berezina: Financial and economic service, together with accounting and IT specialists carried out the analysis of several software products. The Prestima CPM system became the most suitable for the full solution of our tasks.

Besides, we cooperate with Prestima developer long ago and productively –NPO Kompyyuter company. The history of cooperation began in 2005 with automation of accounting, personnel management, payroll calculation and other tasks based on the end-to-end automated system (ETEAS) Business Lux.

Therefore when choosing a budgeting system we addressed the checked and proved partner – NPO Kompyyuter. So we got acquainted with the Prestima CPM system which completely corresponds to our tasks. Besides, Prestima is developed on the same IS-Builder platform, as KAS "Business Lux" thanks to what both systems are almost seamlessly integrated, and the IT specialists supporting KAS "Business Lux" can easily work with Prestima.

TAdviser: How did implementation whether it was succeeded to complete the works in time take place? What difficulties were?

Valentina Berezina: Project works were conducted from May to September, thanks to good methodical preparation and complete mutual understanding with an implementation team of NPO Kompyyuter the project came to the end in time.

If to speak about difficulties of the project, then the receiving stage in the system of the first results of calculation of the fact income and expense budget and their reconciliation with the data which are earlier obtained manually was the most labor-consuming. We with an implementation team reviewed the calculation algorithms which are earlier thought up and configured in a system, compared digits to initial reports, adjusted algorithms, again calculated and verified. It became as a result clear that for completely automatic calculation it is necessary to make changes to structure of cost items in accounting.

TAdviser: Valentina, how you estimate project deliverables whether it turned out to implement everything what you expected?

Valentina Berezina: Yes, we were satisfied with automation. First, the labor input of collection of data on execution of budgets considerably decreased, earlier we collected data manually, and now the necessary information is automatically generated in Prestima.

It became simpler to plan budgets also, now instead of Excel we use the specialized Prestima - "Planning Forms" tool. Convenient input, adjustment and the analysis of budgets and also automatic formation of the plan for different algorithms considerably reduces labor input of planning of budgets.

Change of processes of approval of payments and preparation of the register on payment became also important result. Now more than 70 employees of divisions will approve requests for payment through Directum electronic document management systems, at the same time the budget controller in the Prestima system checks expenses on compliance to limits of the budget of cash flow (BCF), and in the payment schedule both the register of payments, and payment orders automatically form. Thus, implementation of Prestima provided accurate control of all payments and considerably facilitated work on carrying out payment.

TAdviser: Whether you are going to develop a system further?

Valentina Berezina: Of course, the project on automation of purchase planning of material resources and services in Prestima (CPM) and Directum (ECM) is now kept. As a result expense control under economic agreements due to more exact planning and control of limits will be in addition strengthened even at approval of the agreement.