University Business - January 2010 - (Page 55)

without breaking the system?’ ” see the data to perform his or 9 New Rules of fiNaNcial RepoRtiNg Yet once people start running her job, and the level of access 1. Aim for a culture of self-service reporting. their own financial reports, “they is determined accordingly. embrace it very, very quickly,” he Another pretraining action 2. Understand that a true culture change may be required to accomplish that goal. says. IBM offers users training on worth some thought is forming how the software works, how to a committee to focus on report 3. Recognize the reporting tool limitations of your current build reports, and how to use the generation and analysis issues data system. information they can now access. and goals. “We have a reporting 4. Use a cross-campus committee to help identify “It is all about self-service, getting committee made up of represenreporting challenges and solutions. it into the hands of users who tatives from across the university 5. Look into purchasing or creating a new, user-friendly make decisions,” he adds. who come together to talk about reporting tool. In Strand’s experience at what kinds of reports we need, 6. Be open to working with a variety of users when SAS, clients will get department how the current ones are workdeciding who can create reports. leaders together for a few days ing, and what improvements 7. Offer initial and ongoing training based on real campus of training to get them up to need to be made,” says UMBC’s challenges and geared toward each audience. speed on how to use the finanSchaefer. The group was formed 8. Identify power users within each department and cial management software. “They several years ago to work with provide them with the support, such as time, that they learn how to develop a simple or the existing reporting tool, but need to support others. complex report for their departhaving that infrastructure in 9. Put the time saved on creating and understanding ment, school, campus, or whole place was useful when the decireports to good use through more careful data analysis. system,” he says. Broward and sion was made to purchase the SAS jointly offered initial trainiStrategy financial solution. “We have found it’s very valuable to bring all the parties to- ing for the institution’s senior management, and then one-on-one gether to talk through what information is needed and how best to retraining has been offered to reinforce the value of the software, deliver it to the various users,” Schaefer says. “The business manag- says Mendez, adding that a guide to the tool was developed for all ers, research faculty, principal investigators on grants, chairs and users to consult. A recommendation for iStrategy clients is to choose a problem, deans, the president and vice presidents all have different takes on such as creating a budget, and explore its solution during a training what information is important to them.” UMBC also has a committee to help in the reporting require- session, Mallin explains. Then the institution can incrementally add ments for accepting and spending grant money. “It’s one single to and grow the application. At many institutions, administrators group specifically looking at how to improve post-award grant management, in- ‘It is all about self-service, getting it into the hands of users cluding financial reporting,” she explains. who make decisions.” —Robert Dolan, IBM The University of North Texas is also using cross-campus groups to help with reporting. A steering committee comprised of a provost and vice “just want to solve every problem at once and won’t roll out until presidents from various departments with different constituencies they do that,” he says. “What happens is they go on for a year, fundand data needs meets quarterly, according to William Senn, direc- ing gets cut off, and nothing gets done.” tor of decision support. “The steering committee guides the deFor Oakland University’s development team, the training goal cision support family, which meets monthly and discusses similar was to allow the finance person associated with each academic proissues at a lower level, including what tactics are needed to make gram to learn the origin of a specific gift. the report or analysis possible,” he says. Senn’s team has developed a “If the school of nursing business manager sees $1,000 of revnumber of budget reports through the IBM Cognos business intel- enue that hit last night because a gift was processed, we give a trainligence platform that allow budget officers to “look in and dive as ing program that teaches them how to go backwards and see who deeply as they’d like” into the data. that gift actually came from,” says Saunders. The development team can go onto Banner Advancement and see who made a particular gift, but in the past, those using Banner Finance couldn’t do so. The Training for Self-Service Reporting A few months ago, when Dolan met with an IBM Cognos custom- users also have to be trained to understand the difference between er, he says campus leaders’ “biggest concern was, ‘How do we get gift and pledge revenue, he explains. With pledge revenue, they people within our organization embracing this culture and getting must understand that “there’s no money in the bank yet.” At Calvin College, training for the iStrategy solution is them to understand that they can run their own kinds of reports universitybusiness.com January 2010 | 55 http://www.universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - January 2010

University Business - January 2010
Contents
Editor's Note
Company Index
College Index
Advisory Board
Behind the News
Community Colleges
Sense of Place
Viewpoint
Human Resources
Money Matters
Endowments 2010: Risk Management, Liquidity, Stewardship
Donor 3.0
Reporting for Duty
End Note

University Business - January 2010