Athabasca College (AU), Canada’s Open College, is devoted to eradicating boundaries that prohibit entry and success inside university-level research and growing equality of academic alternatives for grownup learners worldwide.
To help their mission, AU outlined their “Think about” Technique, which was a five-year plan outlining strategic precedence outcomes for the establishment. Underpinning the execution and guaranteeing alignment with their goals required a collaborative built-in planning course of. The problem was that the annual planning and subsequent forecasting processes have been a significant impediment as a result of lack of transparency and entry to related well timed data for decision-making, leading to a scarcity of belief and collaboration. To repair this, Lengthy Huynh, Director of Determination Help, was introduced on board to work with the group to meet two goals:
Roll out a Finance Enterprise Companion (FBP) Program, which targeted on constructing a group of finance of us who might collaborate with college members and division heads on monetary/enterprise plans, remodeling finance into advisors to the enterprise versus compilers and producers of studies.
Streamline the built-in planning and forecasting course of, making it straightforward for customers to entry data, observe variances in spend and initiatives and allow college members to re-forecast and in the end personal their numbers.
To help with this transformation, AU started working with us at ActionKPI—a Efficiency Administration Consultancy specializing in built-in useful resource planning—to assist outline a roadmap and phased method to re-architecting their planning processes and programs. The consequence was elevated belief and collaboration from all schools and departments whereas growing the pace and agility of the monetary reporting, budgeting and forecasting processes.
Challenges confronted
Lack of transparency: The information for monetary reporting was nested inside completely different platforms with completely different ranges of entry. Finances homeowners struggled to know their budgets and had issue accessing related data, understanding variances all through the month and main as much as the quarter.
Guide and siloed budgeting: The budgeting course of relied on an antiquated system that was not user-friendly and disconnected from the principle ERP system. Budgets needed to be manually uploaded, making it difficult to combine actuals and forecasts.
Restricted entry to knowledge: Some knowledge—reminiscent of HR and payroll—was troublesome to entry, hindering monetary evaluation and decision-making. They weren’t in a position to get insights into labour prices and make correct budgets and forecasts on one in all their main value centres.
Earlier than implementing the answer, the monetary knowledge was scattered throughout completely different platforms with various ranges of entry. Finances homeowners couldn’t simply entry their price range data, which brought about them to depend on particular people to clarify studies resulting from siloed knowledge and complicated nuances.
Moreover, Athabasca College’s budgeting course of was hindered by an unintuitive system that operated independently from their ERP system, Banner. Guide uploads and a scarcity of integration between their outdated system and Banner added to the complexity and time-consuming nature of the budgeting course of.
The journey begins: Improved price range visibility
After preliminary discussions with ActionKPI, Lengthy Huynh and the finance group noticed the chance to show the facility of built-in useful resource planning by IBM Planning Analytics (PA).
The main target firstly was on growing a variance and forecasting mannequin inside PA that mixed price range and precise knowledge from supply programs in a user-friendly answer accessible to varied stakeholders throughout the college. Not like their outdated system, PA enabled every day automated uploads from their ERP and supplied well timed entry to completely different reporting hierarchies and variances, and it gave the power to drill down on transactional knowledge. Finances homeowners might log in and examine their budgets at any time, clearly understanding their monetary place and empowering them to actively take part within the budgeting course of and take corrective motion to fulfill targets. This enchancment considerably enhanced transparency, belief and accountability amongst their numerous price range homeowners.
“It was such a foundational change to how we seemed on the budgets—from a handbook add of information that may be a month outdated or perhaps a quarter outdated to each evening. It modified the pace at which we are able to make selections and see what is occurring.” — Lengthy Huynh
The second section: Workforce and HR integration
As soon as the preliminary mannequin was constructed and knowledge from Banner was built-in instantly with IBM Planning Analytics (PA), the main focus turned to HR (particularly workforce) to higher perceive one of many college’s main value centres.
Beforehand, HR tightly guarded payroll data resulting from privateness necessities, leading to restricted entry and inadequate granularity.
To beat this problem, AU and ActionKPI developed a workforce variance mannequin inside PA that encompassed the FTEs and positions on the college, versus staff. Precise college payroll knowledge by place was integrated into the mannequin, offering visibility into labour prices, emptiness value financial savings and headcount, whereas nonetheless sustaining knowledge safety and privateness.
Having this workforce element allowed college members and departments to revise their FTE plans and subsequent labour prices, making a rolling forecast. This not solely improved the forecast accuracy however enabled AU to turn out to be extra agile inside the decision-making course of.
“Payroll is the largest piece of the expense pie, and a radical and correct understanding of it’s required for an correct forecast. Now, we are able to forecast by every place and see the influence in-month and into the longer term.” — Lengthy Huynh
To handle privateness and knowledge safety issues, the finance group collaborated with HR to find out the suitable wage element every price range proprietor might entry. Every supervisor can solely see wage particulars for workers inside their hierarchy and solely place numbers are proven relatively than names. This permits managers the transparency and element required to make knowledgeable selections whereas sustaining satisfactory safety and privateness.
Built-in useful resource planning: A holistic method
The journey continued with a deal with built-in useful resource planning. The college aimed to transition from closed-door decision-making to inclusive, built-in useful resource planning that concerned stakeholders from throughout the group.
Previous to this initiative, useful resource plans and proposed price range modifications have been submitted as separate Excel recordsdata, resulting in collaboration challenges, model management points and handbook knowledge entry.
ActionKPI built-in the price range and useful resource planning processes into IBM Planning Analytics (PA), permitting for a streamlined method. This additionally enabled a democratized course of the place price range homeowners collaborate with their Finance Enterprise Companions to replace their price range entries. This supported larger possession and eradicated the method of price range homeowners sending numbers to finance and finance doing the entry.
Beforehand, inconsistent finance information throughout completely different schools and departments led to poor or inaccurate forecasting and budgeting practices.
The rollout of the Finance Enterprise Companion Program contributed to the success of the built-in useful resource planning course of by offering personalised finance help and advisory to every division. It was the monetary acumen, ardour for customer support and data-driven decision-making expertise of the FBP group—mixed with the streamlined planning processes and programs—that made it doable.
“Earlier than, plenty of selections have been made behind closed doorways. Now, the college has moved to built-in planning, so it is rather inclusive. Virtually each price range holder is concerned within the course of versus simply finance.” — Lengthy Huynh
Finance Enterprise Companions, assigned to every division, labored carefully with price range homeowners to show how PA may very well be utilized to enter, observe and visualize price range modifications over time.
This integration fostered collaboration, transparency and knowledgeable monetary decision-making all through the college.
Via this mannequin, Athabasca College achieved improved forecasting consistency and high quality. The FBP mannequin wouldn’t have been profitable with out the implementation of PA, because it supplied the required infrastructure for efficient collaboration and help between finance and price range homeowners.
Conclusion
The journey to reinforce transparency and belief inside the college’s monetary processes resulted in vital enhancements.
By implementing IBM Planning Analytics and integrating budgets, actuals and useful resource planning, the college achieved higher visibility, streamlined processes and elevated stakeholder involvement.
The initiatives undertaken by Lengthy and his group not solely reworked monetary decision-making but additionally contributed to a cultural shift in direction of data-driven decision-making and collaboration.
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