Budget Forecasting Workflow Redesign

Excel • reporting workflows • requirements gathering • process improvement • public health operations

This case study is based on non-confidential process work from federal public health grant management. The problem was simple but consequential: recurring budget development and review depended on document-based templates that made information harder to standardize, validate, compare, and explain.

Problem

Program teams needed to submit budget information across many projects, but the existing Word-based templates were not a good fit for structured review. They allowed inconsistent formatting, made errors harder to spot, and created friction when information needed to be consolidated for finance, grants, and leadership review.

Approach

I replaced the document-based process with a structured Excel workflow that made the work easier to complete, review, and consolidate.

The redesign focused on:

• clearer input structure for program users;
• more consistent categories and assumptions;
• easier review by grants and finance staff;
• fewer repeated clarification cycles during budget review;
• documentation and training so non-technical users could follow the process reliably.

What Changed

• Budget inputs moved into a more structured format.
• Reviewers could compare and consolidate project-level assumptions more efficiently.
• Staff had clearer guidance on what information belonged where.
• The workflow became easier to teach, repeat, and improve over time.

Why It Matters

This was not a software project, but it was a data workflow problem. The work required requirements gathering, user-centered process design, data consistency, documentation, training, and judgment about how information would be used downstream.

Those are the same habits I bring to business intelligence work: understand the operational context, define the structure, reduce ambiguity, and build workflows that help people make better decisions.

Skills Demonstrated

• Requirements gathering from program and finance stakeholders.
• Reporting workflow design in a regulated public health funding environment.
• Excel-based structure for recurring budget and planning data.
• Process documentation and training for non-technical users.
• Translation between operational needs and review-ready outputs.