Energy Company’s Budget Process Transformation Drives Agility and Strategic Impact

This large energy company had invested in several thousand Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses but found that adoption rates were not as robust as anticipated, with only about 30 percent of those licenses in use. The company was a long-standing Protiviti client and maximising both the company’s and our partnership with Microsoft, brought our team onboard to support a push to engage new users. Microsoft provided $86,000 in End Customer Investment Funds (ECIF) to help with this effort.

Assessment leads to implementation

Protiviti’s approach to any project focused on Microsoft Copilot adoption is to take a business-centric perspective. We work with the client to determine how we can best drive personal productivity across the business and ultimately begin to transform business/operational procedures and processes.

For this project, we partnered with the company’s Director of Digital Workplace Services to effectively coordinate our efforts across the organisation. We conducted assessments to gauge the client’s current state, including reviewing what was working, what wasn’t and what the client would like to do differently going forward. While the in-house Copilot team had done initial, base-level training and promotion to reach 1,500 users, adoption had slowed. Our primary challenge would be to effectively integrate this technology into the existing infrastructure and ensure its optimal utilisation across multiple departments. The company also preferred to focus on organic growth driven by motivated new users, versus assigning licenses by department.

Following the assessment, we developed a customised adoption strategy tailored to the client's specific requirements. This strategy included detailed plans for deployment, training programs for staff, and measures to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of the technology post-implementation. Features of the strategy included:

• Development of an initial outreach plan
• Creation of a user lifecycle, from on-boarding to endorsement using identified personas specific to this client’s workforce
• Development of specific, advanced application training leveraging Microsoft Chat and Microsoft Loop
• Introduction of multi-channel training, content and office hours, to build confidence and increase adoption across the organisation
• Introduction of ongoing knowledge sharing as teams began to understand the power of the technology

A significant part of the work involved facilitating seamless integration of Microsoft Copilot into existing systems. We worked closely with the company’s IT team to ensure the technology was implemented without disrupting ongoing operations. This was complemented by a robust support structure to address any technical issues promptly.

Change management drives success

Change management techniques played a crucial role in promoting Microsoft Copilot's usage across the organisation. We wanted to build excitement for Copilot, emphasising the timesaving efficiencies the tool could deliver. We designed and delivered comprehensive virtual training programs, ensuring all employees, regardless of their technical proficiency, could utilise Copilot effectively. Ranging from basic Copilot skills to more advanced techniques for using the tool, these training sessions focused on demonstrating the practical applications of Microsoft Copilot in daily tasks, encouraging employees to incorporate it into their workflows.

We also developed specialised training offerings including a Copilot Chat and Microsoft Copilot in Loop session, the latter being a more advanced user feature. A “prompt of the week” message to all users continued the informal education loop. Materials were designed to match the client’s brand, reinforcing the corporate commitment to Copilot adoption.

Protiviti also helped the client implement processes for maximising the Copilot dashboard to track usage and impact of Microsoft Copilot within the organisation. This allowed the organisation to measure the success of the implementation and identify areas for further improvement.

Transforming the annual budget process

To achieve the client’s goals as established in the roadmap, Protiviti worked in collaboration with a cross-functional client team to drive the necessary transformation to execute the subsequent year annual budget process:

• Formalised the budget process, reducing the budget cycle by approximately 10 weeks. This formal task-based budget tracker (inclusive of key deliverables, cross-functional responsibilities, management reviews, and deliverable dates) established the appropriate level of governance required to facilitate a focused and streamlined budget process.
• Built a more flexible driver-based financial model, unlocking agility and enabling greater business partnerships. Data-driven P&L financial models included standardised input templates for commercial and operational teams to input business drivers and key assumptions, enabling the ability to run various scenarios throughout the budget process. These models were also built to enable a seamless transition into the finance management platform to drive more robust adoption and use of the tool.
• Developed an integrated three-statement financial model to provide management with an accurate view of the consolidated total company budget. This integrated model provided a mechanism to consolidate all three business segments, eliminating intercompany activities. This model also provided management with a more comprehensive and accurate view of the consolidated budget provided, enabling more informed strategic decision-making across the company.
• Established formal planning and review meetings to drive greater accountability and improve overall budget accuracy. Planning meetings were conducted with commercial, operational, and departmental leaders to incorporate and validate key budget inputs, KPIs, and assumptions, thereby enhancing business partnership with the FP&A organisation. Formalised management reviews of budget versions and final budget were established to ensure transparency, timeliness of requested actions, and alignment of the final budget submission in accordance with the established budget timelines.
• Executed the annual budget process to augment the client’s understaffed FP&A organisation. Protiviti served as the client’s FP&A organisation throughout the annual budget process, which included:
  • Preparation of initial financial models based on existing data and analysis of business drivers.
  • Reviews of initial business drivers with commercial, operational, and departmental leaders, adjusting assumptions and inputs based on planned strategic initiatives and anticipated business actions to drive growth and optimise spend.
  • Finalisation and presentation of consolidated budget results to management, leveraging the creation of an enhanced management reporting package, providing a comprehensive overview of the annual budget, key drivers and analytics to enable informed decision-making.

Unlocking future value

The transformation of the annual budget process unlocked significant future value for the company, including:

• A more efficient and focused annual budgeting process, which served as a basis for the establishment of a quarterly re-forecast process.
• Improved budget and forecast accuracy.
• Enhanced cross-functional collaboration, incorporating the business perspective into budgets and forecasts.
• More informed strategic decision-making and resource allocation across the organisation’s multiple divisions.
• Streamlined the implementation by removing financial model complexities and documenting the existing budget model’s operations and defined KPIs.
• Clear communication of the company’s strategic advantages and value propositions, articulating the business case to potential lenders.

As a result, the company’s leadership team is now better equipped to confidently assess its financial outlook and cash position, allowing for greater focus on high-impact strategic initiatives that support continued profitable growth.