McK Budget Process

Context

McKesson Technology (MT) is the technology arm of one of the largest healthcare companies in North America. The internal Finance team manages an 18-month rolling forecast across people, tools, and initiatives — a process that spans multiple teams, roles, and systems throughout the fiscal year (September to March).

I worked on several design projects within McKesson Technology. This case study documents the first: a six-week UX discovery engagement on the MT budget process.

The Problem

The MT budget process involved multiple actors — MT Finance, FSS, Capability Leaders, and Solution Owners — each with different responsibilities, tools, and mental models of the same process. The result was predictable: manual workarounds, unclear ownership, misaligned estimates, and stakeholder frustration at every cycle.

The Finance team's goal was to reach ±1% budget accuracy. But before any solution could be designed, the problem needed to be properly understood. Nobody had mapped the full process end-to-end, and nobody had systematically asked the people doing the work what was actually breaking.

4 problem statements framed the research:

• How might we enable MT to focus resources on value-adds that align with top-down business goals?
• How might we lean into EPMO and portfolio processes to improve inputs into the budget cycle?
• How might we prioritise initiatives before they reach the budget process, so scoping is accurate and time isn't wasted?
• How might we streamline the budget process and equip both budget owners and FP&A with modern, automated tools?

Process

Define & Align

Worked with directors and finance leads to frame the four "How might we" problem statements — creating shared focus before any research began. Without this step, 15 interviews across different roles would have produced 15 different interpretations of what needed fixing.

Stakeholder Research

Designed a structured interview guide and conducted 15 interviews across FP&A, Capability Leaders, Solution Owners, Delivery Leads, and cost-centre owners. Questions covered current process, pain points, tool usage, manual overhead, and the classic closer: "If you had a magic wand, what's the one thing you'd change?"

Synthesis & Mapping

Organised 6 hours of affinity-mapping workshops, coding 100+ interview notes into themes across five categories: pain points, tools leveraged, wants and needs, project goals, and complications vs. opportunities. Built 3 archetype personas representing the distinct behavioural and workflow differences across Finance, Solution Leaders, and operational roles.

Journey Mapping

Documented the full budget lifecycle — from kickoff to sign-off — as 2 end-to-end journey maps, annotating friction points and handoff gaps. This was the artefact that made abstract frustrations visible to leadership.

Reporting & Facilitation

Delivered a 30-page research report and a prioritised recommendations deck covering three horizons: quick wins (centralised budgeting tool pilot), medium-term automation (schedule-driven data feeds), and long-term governance improvements. Led a workshop with the MT Finance steering committee to validate findings and plan next steps.