Introduction
In 2021, ForBis was appointed to act as the centralized accounting & administrator for an entrepreneurship programme organized by a local polytechnic The institution has come up with a program to promote innovation and entrepreneurship locally. It is hoped that through this program students and alumni can realise their start-up dreams through mentoring, networking and financial support. One of the most pressing challenges for this engagement that needs to be addressed is the need to start the management for the project’s centralised accounting and administration. This need encompasses briefing materials for expenditure guideline and claiming process, expenditure and milestone report tracking, weekly processing and submission of approved claims and closure reports. Since a centralised accounting and administrative system is of high importance, it is critical that the appointment appointment requires high level of meticulous planning, checks and quick turnaround. In addition to that, the many documents that need to be processed for claims require thorough work. If this process is not carried out in a well-organised manner, it will undoubtedly put the project flow at risk.
How ForBis turned the Project into a Success: Ensuring conversation flow and sticking to schedule
The implementation was delivered in three phases, the first one took 5 working days to complete, which focused on the preparation of the project—briefing to participants on expenditure guidelines and claiming process. A recording of the briefing & the briefing slides was also sent to the participants so that they can refer to it at any point in time. The second phase was done in 6 months per applicant, which involved introductory briefing for applicants, email support and preparation of closure report template. The third and last phase revolved around reviewing and reporting. In this phase, we also prepared the closure reports. Although the first phase only took 5 days, which is a relatively short time to be able to completely grasp what the institution needs, ForBis still managed to communicate clear expectations on how and when the project will be completed. This certainly give a positive impact in a way that it sets a strong foundation for the subsequent phases. Throughout the second and third phase, ForBis was able to establish clear communication between both parties and stick to the schedule that was decided. We were also able to understand the demographics of the participants, ForBis used Whatsapp as an additional form of communication. The participants were more willing to clarify any doubts they had via Whatsapp, which reduced errors in submissions. This was crucial since the claims were submitted on a weekly basis for each project to the institution. This is added with the fact that each claim would need to be processed within 10 days of submission. Understanding that the most time-consuming process of the project is the submission of supporting documents, ForBis’ Advisory team quickly deployed their technology by creating an online form for the applicants to submit their claims. As a result, the amount of back-and-forth communication between the parties were drastically reduced.
Results
At the end of the project, ForBis managed to complete the project on time and delivered an excellent end-result. The institution’s project was carried out successfully with both the applicants and the institution obtaining positive experience. The solution that ForBis provided enables faster administration and accounting processes. Another reason why this implementation was ultimately a success was because of ForBis’ ability to quickly strategise the whole process that requires back-and-forth communication between the applicants and the institution itself. Rather than manually conduct communication to each of the applicants, ForBis decided to utilise the abovementioned strategy that was proven to benefit all parties in terms of efficiency, accuracy and time frame. In this project, we managed to complete some processes earlier than expected, which accelerated other upcoming processes. For instance, the target time for the first phase was planned for two weeks, however, we managed to complete the first phase within five days only. The same goes with the time taken to verify and process each submission, the target time was 10 days, while in reality, we managed to process the submission only within one working day. In addition, the service report that was targeted to be finished within one month was done in just one week. By sticking to the schedule, continuing conversations and ensuring that both companies’ did not find any notable obstruction created an atmosphere where all parties have positive outlook that the engagement would be delivered as planned.
