Government and education budgeting professionals face constant pressure to provide analytical support for difficult decisions on how to allocate scarce resources. The difficulty of this task is exacerbated by the fact that many state and local governments continue to rely on a mix of outdated and cumbersome tools to collect data and analyze budget scenarios and alternatives. As a result, analysts spend most of their time chasing down numbers, reconciling these numbers, and filling out spreadsheets rather than doing the actual analysis that adds value to the decision-making process.
The good news is that emerging budgeting solutions offer increasingly sophisticated capabilities to integrate and automate inefficient data collection and manipulation processes while providing greater insight into budgets in support of decision-making. To select an appropriate solution and solution integrator, however, a public sector organization must consider a range of factors, including functional fit, technical architecture, ease of configuration, the solution’s long-term viability, and the evaluating organization’s ability to support and maintain the solution long-term.
This ISG white paper examines today’s public sector budgeting landscape, features and benefits of different solutions, and key selection criteria and considerations.
