Alteryx data collection, allocation automation, and detailed reporting

Project overview and objectives

When a $100B+ managed care organization acquired another company, they had a few things to sort out—like the disparate use of two separate cost allocation platforms and an inconsistent cost framework. But timing (and pricing) was of the essence, and a large-scale platform implementation wasn’t the right fit. Enter Alteryx. Selected as the technology of choice, Alteryx checked off all the boxes for the client:

• Lower total cost of ownership
• Flexibility—ability to be managed by the business and adapt quickly to changes
• Enhanced visibility into product costs, profit, and reporting
• Proven improvements in run-time performance and automation
• A low-code/no-code workflow interface 

The beauty of this Alteryx solution? It’s a ready-built expense allocation engine that can be applied for other organizations, tailored to their unique needs.

What we did

For starters, we collaborated across Finance and IT to develop a new engine that fully automated expense allocations, each with highly customized allocation methods. We also:

• Developed upstream Alteryx workflows to automate population, distribution, and gathering of multiple data collection templates
• Created new management reporting views using PowerBI dashboards to enable detailed reporting, showcase end-to-end data lineage, provide variance analysis, and track upstream data submission
• Automated and streamlined the management fee calculation and journal entry creation process
• Provided training on Alteryx workflows for ongoing maintenance and enhancements

Impact

The underlying themes of this project? Visibility and accuracy. Our leading-class Alteryx allocation engine established a standardized cost allocation framework, used more drivers and data points, and ultimately created more transparency around cost allocation with reduced reliance on manual workflows. The results speak for themselves:

• 6 hours of time savings per run occurrence—taking performance from 8 hours to 2
• 70% reduction in cost for platform stand up and 90% decrease in licensing costs as compared to a larger-scale implementation
• An adaptable solution that won’t need to be redesigned with business changes and doesn’t rely on IT
• Easy calculation of data according to certain attributes, like cost pool, drivers, and targets

Truth is, there’s a lot of benefit of turning to an Alteryx workflow for an expense allocation engine. And now that we’ve built a fully piloted and proven model, it can be deployed for other organizations quickly and seamlessly.