2022 Planning, Budgeting, and Analytics Forum

After conducting member focus groups and a survey, NACUBO recently released a list of the top business issues confronting colleges and universities. In this session, panelists will explore the top challenges college and university business leaders are working to navigate. Presenters will share how these business issues are evolving at their institutions as well as strategies they are developing to tackle challenges and take advantage of opportunities.

• Dennis Jones, executive budget director, Norfolk State University
• Katie Walker, executive director of financial planning and analysis, University of Virginia
• Randy Roberson, vice president, leadership development, NACUBO

60 minutes; 1 CPE credit in Specialized Knowledge

Join one team on their journey from analysis to building a transformative operational plan. This session will lay out and review the goals, steps taken, analysis, the operational plan, and its outcomes. The exposition will be followed by an interview that will dive into the impact of analysis and planning on the institution-wide system.

• Lorenzo Esters, chancellor, Ivy Tech Community College Indianapolis
• Katie Hagan, principal, rpk GROUP

60 minutes; 1 CPE credit in Management Services

This interactive session will provide key insights and best practices for how organizations can leverage an all-funds approach to budgeting and financial management to communicate financial position, identify opportunities for resource reprioritization, and optimize investment opportunities. Join an institution in a rich discussion on why this approach leads to robust financial communication and encourages a transparent and common understanding of financial position. Learn how this approach can help you communicate critical financial information in a simple and comprehensive way for a variety of audiences.

• George Kolb, associate vice president of budgeting, University of Florida
• Taylor Jantz, manager, Huron Higher Education
• Kevin Lintner, higher education senior associate, Huron

Finance data isn’t the only finance data. Colleges and universities increasingly need access to integrated data—linking finance, student, HR, space, and other data types—to make decisions. Colleges and universities have an abundance of data, but getting to it in a timely manner and transforming it into actionable information often involves time-consuming, manual, and potentially error-prone processes. This session’s facilitator will engage business officers in a discussion about the importance of integrated data, how to improve processes to reduce technical debt, and how to build a culture of data-informed institutional planning and budgeting.

• Linda Kroll, associate vice president for finance, University of Notre Dame
• Jean Vock, senior vice president for business affairs and CFO, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
• Steve Lott, regional manager – education, OneStream

Immerse yourself in the genesis, design, development, features, and uses of an application of ServiceNow (aka Budget Assist) employed by one institution in support of the university's annual operating budget creation process. This session will review Budget Assist's institutional benefits, lessons learned, examples of real requests, and provide a live demonstration.

• Jeff Hamrick, vice provost, University of South Florida
• Michael Harrington, associate vice provost planning and budget, University of San Francisco

This session explores enabling data-informed decision-making in financial planning and management processes. Tarleton State University has been working on a transformational approach that aligns financial planning and budgeting processes with funding priorities and strategic plan goals and objectives. Their approach helps leaders across campus baseline their spending to address commitments, staffing, and operational priorities that align with the institution’s mission, goals, and objectives.

• Jo Ann Kern,director of strategic financial planning, Tarleton State University

Find out how one institution utilized academic, financial, student success, and course scheduling data to improve student success and financial sustainability. You will access concrete examples of how the data is being used to support academic and student success planning. Learn practical strategies institutions can implement to improve academic program financial health and remove barriers to student success.

• Jill Loveless, provost, West Virginia Northern Community College
• Lisa Hunter, vice president of education, Ad Astra
• Caleb Tegtmeier, strategic solutions consultant, Ad Astra

This demo showcases how UNLV's Anaplan financial model streamlined their budget process facilitating proactive decision-making and planning across the university. This solution replaced Excel as their primary budget tool, resulting in easy access to reporting, including budget-to-actuals, and providing forecasting capabilities. UNLV chose Anaplan for its capability of building multiple models with a variety of complex requirements and chose TruEd Consulting due to its implementation team’s deep higher education experience.

Speakers

• Megan Gerke, Anaplan system manager, financial planning, budget and analysis, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
• Erin Messer, associate budget director, financial planning, budget, and analysis, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
• Russ Owen, manager, public sector, TruEd Consulting

30 minutes; no CPE credit is offered for demo sessions

Learn how one university created a business intelligence platform and pushed a real shift towards a more data-informed culture. This session will review the project management, design, collaboration, technology, and data governance aspects of creating such a platform, and will talk through the wins and struggles along the way in leveraging resources and engagement/adoption. Find out how you can apply these elements via a live demonstration of the platform.

• David Doig, director of fiscal analytics and decision support, University of Colorado Denver
• Dave Deffenbacher, assistant vice chancellor, Office of Institutional Research and Effectiveness, University of Colorado Denver

The University of Virginia implemented a responsibility center management budget model in FY2015 and conducted its second review of the model during FY2021. That review resulted in significant simplification of the model, making it more strategic, transparent, and supportive of multi-year planning. This session will give participants an overview of how the review was conducted, the parties involved at all levels through the process, and the early results of the revised of the budget model. Session presenters will discuss communication strategies, governance issues, and data integrity as they present participants with a roadmap for evaluating their own budget models.

• Bill Ashby, associate vice president for financial strategy, University of Virginia
• Adam Daniel, vice provost for planning, University of Virginia
• Rob Hoover, senior associate dean for administration and chief financial officer, McIntire School of Commerce, University of Virginia
• Katie Walker, Executive director of financial planning and analysis, University of Virginia

Hear how one institution developed an analytical tool to measure the rate of return for academic programs at the institutional, college, department, and course levels, as well as by course number. This tool measures actual individual net tuition revenue and cost of instruction and provides staff in academic affairs with valuable insight into the financial performance of academic programs. Not only does the institutional analysis examine performance of the last six years, but the data also forecast and look forward to the next six years. Discover how this valuable tool can support the annual budget allocation model and can serve as a key input into academic master planning.

• Darrell Haydon, chief financial officer/vice president for administrative services, University of the Incarnate Word

Discover how one university is using analytical insights and information to support broad set of institutional goals including student equity, accessibility, student diversity, student success, and enrollment growth. This presentation will discuss how a collaborative and integrated data and analytics initiative is supporting the implementation of Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) practice to achieve these goals. Presenters will discuss the institution’s goals, process issues, collaborative data initiatives, and demonstrate the analytics platform while acknowledging the challenges in implementing change culture.

• Juan Espinoza, associate vice provost for enrollment management, director of undergraduate admissions, Virginia Tech
• Abhay Joshi, director of analytics, Office of Analytics and Institutional Effectiveness (A&IE), Virginia Tech

Where do things stand for higher education almost two years after President Biden entered the White House? How will the results of the midterm elections affect the administration’s agenda? Hear timely updates from the nation’s capital including recent rulemaking efforts at the Department of Education and other federal agencies. Other advocacy action items for the higher education community, and notable action within Congress and the federal agencies will also be discussed.

• Bryan Dickson, director, student financial services and educational programs, NACUBO

Cutting programs can be risky and may lead to adverse outcomes for the institution. Campus professionals need to know where revenue and costs come from and their impact on program margins. Join Gray Associate’s economics expert Pete Starrett for a demonstration of how a Program Evaluation System (PES+) can quickly and precisely calculate your academic programs' contribution margins and course costs. He will also describe course and program benchmarking and how to use a predictive model to analyze the potential consequences of program portfolio changes.

Speaker

• Peter Starrett, senior partner and chief product officer, Gray Associates

30 minutes; CPE credit is not available for demo sessions

Colleges and universities can serve as engines of social mobility—and do so while maintaining institutional financial health and sustainability. Data predict a decline high school graduates and a more diverse population of potential collegegoers. This means many institutions will need to rethink their enrollment strategies and begin enrolling more students from historically underserved populations, including adult learners, students of color, and students from low-income backgrounds. To meet the needs of current and future students, leaders will need to collaboratively rethink the college pipeline. How can leaders reimagine pathways to success at their own institutions? Can we look to collaborate with other campuses? In this session, Dr. Jonathan Gagliardi, Northern Arizona University’s new Vice President for Economic Mobility and Social Impact, will discuss his vision for a sustainable institution that propels student success.

Speaker

•  Jonathan Gagliardi, vice president of economic mobility and social impact, Northern Arizona University

Institutions often make program decisions absent data on market trends or impacts on other departments. Predictive models help institutions estimate the effects of program decisions and market trends on staffing and budgets, both within the program’s department and in other departments. Participants will learn about the data and tools needed to reduce the time spent on budgeting and increase accuracy. Discover how to avoid expensive mistakes, such as reducing overall margins by cutting the wrong programs or failing to account for the effect of program growth on staffing needs in general education courses.

• Peter Holbrook, provost and chief academic officer, Tiffin University
• Peter Starrett, senior partner and chief product officer, Gray Associates

As institutions continue to engage in data-informed decision-making at all levels, effective analytics leadership and data management systems are essential to providing trusted, timely, high-quality data consistently to all users. This presentation describes how analytics were reorganized into a new office of centralized institutional analytics to focus on improving operational efficiencies, developing new synergies, leveraging analytics expertise, strengthening collaboration, and advancing student success and well-being. Audience members will learn the specific steps used to engage stakeholders, optimize analytics, and address a myriad student success concerns. Panelists will discuss the issue of reducing equity gaps in student performance in certain courses across the university and underscore the need to promote culturally responsive and inclusive data analytics practices that recognize the increasingly diverse student, faculty, and staff populations we serve.

• Sabrina Andrews, associate vice president of institutional analytics, Indiana University
• Michele Hansen, associate vice chancellor, institutional research and decision support, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis

As student-centered practices become more deeply integrated into all aspects of strategic planning and operational priorities, chief business officers and their teams are discovering new ways to contribute to student success and equity initiatives. This session will present current trends in business office practices and explore opportunities for business office professionals to support and facilitate positive changes in student outcomes. The presenters will also provide an update on the tools and frameworks being developed by NACUBO’s Strategically Financing Equitable Student Outcomes grants, funded by Ascendium, College Futures, and Trellis.

• Jo Ann Kern, director of strategic financial planning, Tarleton State University
• Laura Lupei, associate vice president for university budget and resource planning, Sonoma State University
• Kelli Rainey, senior director, grants management, NACUBO

Three years ago, the University of North Texas System embarked on a journey to completely integrate all budgeting, accounting, and strategic planning processes. The organization has since achieved the goal of establishing a cohesive financial planning structure, which ensures the budget is informed with a comprehensive perspective of strategic goals and available resources. This session will provide an overview of the system’s integrated financial planning framework and the path they followed – from coalition building to technology adoption – to create a circular flow of data to create institutional financial reports, annual budgets, and strategic plans. Panelists will share use cases detailing how they have utilized this new structure to drive data-informed financial decisions across their organization and the value they have realized as a result.

• Kerry Romine, associate vice president, Texas Tech Health Sciences Center
• Paige Smith, associate vice chancellor for budgeting, planning, and analysis, University of North Texas System
• Jill Winkler, Syntellis

As colleges and universities reimagine program offerings, thinking outside the box can help them consider partnerships while focusing on student success and institutional financial health. In this session, you will hear how one institution, after evaluating current programs, created a new partnership with a professional theater company. This new partnership allowed the institution to focus on critical areas, including enrollment and retention efforts, supporting affinity groups, offering innovative programs and student experiences, and maintaining their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion—all while reducing expenses and maintaining quality.

• Isabelle Martinez, assistant director of business and finance, Oglethorpe University
• Peter Stobie, chief finance officer and vice president of business and finance, Oglethorpe University

Being able to nimbly adapt to changes in the higher education environment and successfully navigate unchartered waters is critical for institutional success. Planning requires business officers to rely on a mix of historical data and best assumptions for future impacts and requires institutions to reinvent their approach to financial planning. This session provides a look into the journey taken by Virginia Commonwealth University, focusing on how they reinvented financial planning and how they are using, and intend to use, connected systematic solutions. Attendees will learn about the benefits to and approaches for transforming financial planning and modeling.

• David Allen, assistant vice president, office of budget, analysis and financial planning, Virginia Commonwealth University
• Hector Lora, associate vice president, budgeting, St. Petersburg College
• Hunter Patrick, assistant director of budget and resource analysis, Virginia Commonwealth
• Chuck Persky, vice president, Performance Architects

This session will provide a glimpse at how OneStream can support the sophisticated planning needs of the higher education community. OneStream provides clients with a single platform for budgeting, forecasting, position planning, financial reporting, dashboarding, and consolidation, all supported by embedded data quality management and workflow functions. OneStream allows clients to run more efficient processes, make more effective data-informed decisions, and increase trust in data across key campus stakeholders.

Speakers

• Logan Anderson, senior solution consultant, OneStream
• Steve Lott, regional manager – education, OneStream

30 minutes; CPE credit is not available for demo sessions

Higher education is undergoing momentous changes at an accelerated pace. The need for proactive, long term decision-making is increasingly necessary for institutions to remain sustainable and, ideally, thrive. By analyzing alternative options around key business areas such as enrollment, new programs, capital expenditures, and funding sources, two institutions gained insight into the direction they were each headed, while senior leadership gained confidence that their decisions were supported by strategic analysis. This session will explore the stories of Texas State and Lehigh University – what their challenges were, how they tackled them, and what the outcomes were. Best practices, as well as lessons learned, will be shared, along with examples of how to communicate results to leadership.

• Christine Black, assistant vice president of budgeting, financial planning and analysis, Texas State University
• Alexia Pereira, client success manager, Synario
• Michael Nicolescu, implementations manager, Synario

Higher education is facing myriad challenges, and one of the resources that all institutions should use to help them navigate this environment is data. To leverage data as an institutional asset, colleges and universities need to have an information strategy that allows them to integrate and analyze data, disseminate information, and ensure data-informed decisions support institutional priorities. Presenters will share elements of their institutions’ information strategies, including linking data to mission, data governance, data access and usage, reporting, and navigating information challenges. Audience members will have the opportunity to reflect on their own institutions’ information strategies.

• Orkun Toros, assistant vice president and chief budget officer, University of Texas at Dallas
• Karen Tumlinson, vice president of finance and administration, treasurer, Central College
• Jackie Agustin, manager, analytics and research, NACUBO

It is no surprise that many institutions are experiencing serious declines in enrollment over the past several years due to many factors, causing a corresponding decline in tuition revenue. At Sonoma State University, those challenges have resulted in a 12 percent reduction to the academic affairs budget. Examine how the provost created the first-of-its-kind advisory working group to recommend solutions to the budget crisis and balance the budget for FY23. The resulting experience was a lesson in managing crises, strategic communication, working with stakeholders, and cultural change at an institution where distrust between faculty and administration runs deep.

• Emily Acosta Lewis, professor of communication and media studies, Sonoma State University
• Laura Lupei, associate vice president for university budget and resource planning, Sonoma State University
• Mike Ogg, senior director of budget and planning for academic affairs, Sonoma State University

Choose from one of three topic-based discussion groups.

Changing Revenue Streams

Given the ever-changing environment, colleges and universities have a strong need for diversified revenue streams. Join your colleagues to discuss resource challenges, how data can help with planning, and how others are approaching the next steps.

• Facilitated by Katie Walker, executive director of financial planning and analysis, University of Virginia; and Lindsay Wayt, senior director, analytics, NACUBO
• 1 CPE credit in Specialized Knowledge

Making the Most of People

Data Colleges and universities have many stakeholders—students, faculty, staff, and others. In this roundtable discussion, we will discuss challenges and opportunities with leveraging data from student systems, human resources systems, and other sources.

• Facilitated by Orkun Toros, assistant vice president and chief budget officer, University of Texas at Dallas; Karen Tumlinson, vice president of finance and administration, treasurer, Central College; and Jackie Agustin, manager, analytics and research, NACUBO
• 1 CPE credit in Finance

Connecting Budget Conversations

Come ready to discuss a variety of challenges and strategies budgeting officers should be considering on their campuses. All funds budgeting, planning applications, and the connection between financial statements and budgeting will be discussed, but attendees are encouraged to bring topics of their own.

• Facilitated by Linda Kroll, associate vice president for finance, University of Notre Dame; and Bryan Dickson, director, student financial services and educational programs, NACUBO
• 1 CPE credit in Specialized Knowledge

Every institution has financial drivers that can alter their organizational trajectory. Turning a blank spreadsheet into a long-term financial plan built around those drivers is difficult, and attempting to squeeze more than a few alternative views of the future into a cell-based model is impossible. During this session, you will uncover how Synario's intuitive technology eliminates modeling challenges and empowers schools to model and analyze any mix of scenarios, confidently deciding on their best path forward.

Speakers

• Michael Nicolescu, implementation manager, Synario
• Alexia Pereira, client success manager, Synario
• Marc Pitcher, director of sales, Synario

30 minutes; CPE credit is not available for demo sessions

Hear how three institutions embarked on journeys to overhaul their existing planning processes to improve resource allocation, increase stakeholder engagement, and enhance administrative efficiencies. Each institution will discuss how they have successfully transformed planning capabilities and now spend less time reviewing data entry, inefficient consolidations, and manual reporting—and more time optimizing institutional resources by aligning them to strategic priorities. Presenters will provide attendees a practical framework to follow, including key considerations for success and common pitfalls to avoid. Join this presentation to learn how you can help your institution enable agile planning and improve data-driven decision-making.

Speakers

• Rebecca Barber, associate vice president, financial planning, budget, and analysis, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
• Kelly Epting, associate vice president for finance and budget, University of South Carolina
• Kevin Edelblute, associate vice president for finance, Mississippi State University
• Dwayne Logan, regional vice president, public markets, Anaplan
• Russ Owen, manager, public sector, TruEd Consulting
• Mela Fezzey, executive director, higher education, TruED Consulting

As challenging times continue for higher education, data literacy and data-informed decision-making are even more important for student and institutional success. We have a lot of data, yet well-designed data presentations that foster effective decision-making are few and far between. How do you move from simply sharing data to connecting with your audience in a meaningful way? In this session, we will explore the importance of storytelling and the effective use of visuals to communicate with data. Our goal is to provide the audience with a toolkit they can use to up their game when it comes to presenting and communicating with data.

• Jasmine Yang, director of institutional research and assessment, Hamilton College
• Kirk Kelly, vice president, Vantage Technology Consulting Group

In the wake of the pandemic, colleges and universities are reconsidering how to best utilize their physical spaces. If all employees don’t return to their offices, what are the opportunities for these spaces? What lessons have we learned from how academic spaces and program offerings were transformed during the pandemic? What about co-curricular spaces? In this session, panelists will share a framework for how the use of data and analytics can support institutional space planning. Panelists from different institution types will share examples of how they are using data to optimize space utilization.

• Raijanel Crockem, associate vice president, Texas Southern University
• Jason Hornberger, vice provost, University of Kansas
• Lindsay Wayt, senior director, analytics, NACUBO

Hear how one institution improved financial planning and reporting by leveraging technology to tackle in-year forecasting, budget development, and reporting. The planning and preparation—including staffing—allowed the university to revise some of its business processes and update structures within its ERP. These changes facilitated updates and easier data flows for in-year forecasting and budget reporting, and improved the budget development process and transparency for future planning and reporting. Discover the benefits of changing budget methodology and building an interconnected data-informed approach to university planning while linking various functions across the institution.

Speakers

• Robert Thibeault, budget director, Elizabeth City State University
• Curtis Gratz, partner, Spaulding Ridge
• Jacob Liles, associate, Spaulding Ridge

60 minutes; 1 CPE credit in Information Technology

Using data for strategic decision-making is more vital than ever for higher education institutions. Technology and approaches to transform data into information and describe it in robust and flexible ways have certainly leapt forward. But for many organizations, the processes that underpin the productive and responsible use of information remain bundled in complexity and practices of ownership rather than stewardship. Hear how promoting data as an institutional resource and establishing a practical roadmap can chip away at these challenges and move towards the goal of answering strategic questions for the right people at the right time, in an environment of trust and shared responsibility.

• Suneetha Vaitheswaran, university data officer, Princeton University