Immigration and Naturalisation Service (IND) is part of the Dutch Ministry of Asylum and Migration. The organisation is responsible for implementing Dutch immigration policy. IND assesses applications from people who want to live in the Netherlands or become Dutch citizens. Each year, between 100,000 and 150,000 residence permit applications are processed, alongside thousands of naturalisation requests. To support this mission, IND needs financial planning that is reliable, transparent and aligned with operations.
The challenge
Until recently, IND relied heavily on Microsoft Excel for planning and forecasting. Multiple templates were linked together with complex formulas and manual adjustments to arrive at a closing budget.
As the organisation grew and application volumes increased, this approach reached its limits. What once offered flexibility became increasingly difficult to control, scale and govern.
Several challenges emerged:
- Fragmentation and inefficiency: Budgeting and cost price calculations were managed in separate spreadsheets, resulting in extensive manual copy pasting and reconciliation work.
- Limited transparency and auditability: Excel provided no reliable audit trail. It was often unclear who changed what and which version represented the final budget.
- Risk of multiple versions of the truth: Different teams could work with different versions, creating uncertainty at management level about which numbers were correct.
- Growing complexity: Rising application volumes required more precise insight into capacity planning, costs and resource needs than the Excel setup could reliably support.
Senior leadership made the need explicit: IND aimed for one controlled environment with a single, trusted version of the budget. To move forward, IND initiated a market inquiry for a modern planning solution that supports future growth while bringing greater reliability and clarity to budgeting and reporting.
Our approach
Together with IND, Finext implemented Vena Solutions to replace the fragmented Excel landscape. The objective was clear: retain the familiarity of Excel while introducing the structure, control and consistency required for scalable planning.
Why Vena?
Vena combines the flexibility users know from Excel with the governance of a modern planning platform. This made the transition accessible for IND teams, many of whom were deeply accustomed to working in Excel.
The familiar interface lowered the adoption barrier and helped users move to a more controlled way of working without disrupting daily processes.
“Because it is Excel-based, it stays close to how our colleagues already work. That makes the transition much more familiar and user-friendly.”
Integrated cost price model
Finext designed a tailored model fully linked to the budget. Where figures previously had to be copied manually, budgeting and cost pricing now flow through one connected process.
This ensures:
- one calculation logic
- fewer manual interventions
- immediate consolidation across levels
Users now enter data once and instantly see the impact across the organisation.
Bottom up budgeting
Planning now starts at the operational level:
- number of applications
- productivity per employee
- time required per case
From this foundation, the model builds up to workforce requirements, salary costs and the total cost structure. This creates a direct and consistent link between operations and financial outcomes.
Collaboration and ownership
The solution was developed end to end by Finext in close collaboration with IND. What stood out during the project was the speed at which the Finext team understood IND’s processes, files and organisational structure.
“The speed at which Finext understood how IND works was truly impressive.”
The result
The new setup has changed how IND approaches planning and control.
Key outcomes include:
- One consolidated budget: Budgets from different divisions are now combined in one platform, with a single source of truth.
- Consistent cost pricing: Cost prices per product are calculated in a uniform way, strengthening IND’s ability to explain and justify funding requests.
- Improved transparency: Manual tweaks are no longer possible behind the scenes. Audit trails clearly show changes and responsibilities.
- Long-term insight: IND can now create reliable multi-year budgets that take political dependencies and future trends into account.
- Faster and smoother cycles: Fewer iteration rounds are needed, and confidence in the numbers has increased across the organisation.
IND now works with a scalable and transparent planning solution that supports both operational reality and financial accountability. This allows teams to spend less time fixing spreadsheets and more time supporting IND’s core mission.
Looking ahead
IND sees clear potential to expand the platform further, including connections with HR data, realisations and broader IT landscape integration. The expectation is that the solution will have a significant positive impact on the full planning and control cycle in the coming years.
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