7 ways Unit4 FP&A can help overcome challenges to public sector financial planning

Unit4 Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A), Public Sector, Global

from Unit4 Communications November 13, 2024 | 4 min read

Public sector organizations face immense challenges - balancing fiscal sustainability, social responsibility, and environmental stewardship is paramount. They must optimize resource utilization, deliver value for money, and reduce their carbon footprint.

In addition to a backlog of services, the public sector also has less funding from the government, increasing the need to make investments go as far as possible.

The sector remains under unprecedented pressure to deliver essential services while managing limited resources and meeting a myriad of regulatory requirements.

In this blog, we will cover how Unit4 FP&A can help solve many challenges related to public sector financial planning – keep reading to learn more.

Overcoming Public Sector Financial Challenges

The public sector faces several significant challenges to financial planning, reporting, and stability – here are some:

1. Fiscal Sustainability

Challenge: Ensuring long-term financial health while addressing immediate fiscal pressures and maintaining essential services.

Solution: Unit4 FP&A helps by providing robust surplus and deficit analysis tools, enabling organizations to monitor their financial health, make informed decisions to maintain sustainability, and identify areas for potential savings.

2. Resource Optimization

Challenge: Efficiently allocating limited resources to maximize impact and deliver value for money.

Solution: In the Cloud, Unit4’s ERP suite can integrate all data to ensure that all financial data is centralized and accessible in a single source of truth, allowing for precise resource allocation and real-time adjustments to spending, no more siloed spreadsheets.

3. Regulatory Compliance

Challenge: Navigating complex and evolving regulatory landscapes, which require accurate reporting.

Solution: Unit4 FP&A simplifies compliance through automated, up-to-date reporting capabilities that align with current regulations, including a dedicated lease management application to help with IFRS 16 and ESG compliance among others.

The solution also helps with financial consolidation - integration with ERP makes it easier to consolidate financial data driving consistency for audits and helping meet global accountancy standards.

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4. Transparency and Accountability

Challenge: Meeting the increasing demand for transparency and accountability from stakeholders, citizens, governments, and watchdog organizations.

Solution: The platform enhances transparency with detailed balance sheet reports, cash flow monitoring, and KPI tracking, providing stakeholders with clear and comprehensive financial insights.

Advanced reporting capabilities and automated data entry ensure that there are no errors in reports due to manual workloads.

5. Workforce Management

Challenge: Addressing the needs of a transforming workforce, including reskilling, upskilling, and promoting diversity and inclusion.

Solution: Unit4 FP&A supports workforce management by integrating financial planning with human resources data, enabling better planning and execution of workforce initiatives through the cross-functional people planning capability.

6. Digital Transformation

Challenge: Adapting to the rapid digitization of services and ensuring that technological investments deliver value.

Solution: Unit4 FP&A allows for seamless integration with existing and future technology stacks thanks to the Cloud, ensuring that public sector organizations can adapt to technological changes without disruption.

7. Medium-term Planning

Challenge: Responding to the need to forecast with increased frequency and plan service delivery over the medium term

Solution: Navigate financial planning challenges with Unit4 FP&A’s integrated solution to consolidate data from different sources, shorten planning cycles, centralize data collection, and adjust plans at short notice.

Key Unit4 FP&A Capabilities for Agile Financial Planning

Unit4 FP&A supports tasks such as importing financial data, master data, and structures more efficiently, while exporting planning data and drilling down to ERP transactional activity becomes simpler, enabling you to form financial strategies easily.

Comprehensive Financial Planning and Analysis

The Unit4 FP&A solution has been specifically designed with the financial planning, analysis, and reporting needs of public sector organizations in mind.

At its core is a powerful pre-configured integration to Unit4’s ERP to better connect public sector operational processes and data with the strategic planning capabilities of FP&A.

The platform’s powerful data integration capabilities and reporting, analysis, and dashboarding ensure that all financial data is centralized and accessible, allowing for precise resource allocation and real-time adjustments to spending.

Enhanced Compliance and Transparency

Unit4 FP&A simplifies compliance through automated, up-to-date reporting capabilities that align with current regulations, including a dedicated lease management application to comply with IFRS 16.

The platform enhances transparency with detailed balance sheet reports, cash flow monitoring, and KPI tracking, providing stakeholders with clear and comprehensive financial insights.

Workforce and Resource Management

Unit4 FP&A supports workforce management by integrating financial planning with human resources data, enabling better planning and execution of workforce initiatives.

The Cloud-based nature of Unit4 FP&A allows for seamless integration with existing and future technology stacks, ensuring that public sector organizations can adapt to technological changes without disruption.

24/7 Financial Agility

Scenario planning features enable organizations to model various economic scenarios, assess potential impacts, and develop strategies to mitigate risks. This agility is crucial in a fast-changing economic environment, allowing organizations to adapt quickly and maintain financial stability.

Cost Savings and Value Delivery

By streamlining operations in the Cloud, you could save months of effort annually by automating repetitive manual processes, reducing time spent on data consolidation and over-reliance on personal productivity solutions like Excel, retrieving this in valuable strategic analysis.

How Can Unit4 FP&A Help Overcome These Public Sector Challenges?

Balancing the books in the public sector is a complex and demanding task. However, with Unit4 FP&A, organizations can navigate these challenges more effectively. Unit4 brings over 40 years of public sector expertise to deliver tailored solutions that meet the sector’s unique needs.

Our platform provides a single, accurate source of truth, enhancing transparency and adherence to regulations while empowering the public sector to plan strategically, report on performance, identify and address issues, and adapt to changes swiftly.

With the Unit4 FP&A solution, public sector organizations can: