Fiscal Year End in Higher Education: Time to Draw Up a New Game Plan
By: Will Simmons
For financial teams, navigating the end of the fiscal year in higher education is like the fourth quarter of the championship game. It's a high-pressure situation that calls for a well-executed game plan. The whole season has built up to this, and getting every little detail right is important if you want to bring home a win.
Having just come through this intense scenario, it's time for you and your colleagues to do what any well-drilled team would do: Start working out a perfect strategy for next season. The past year's successes and challenges are fresh in your mind, allowing you to lay the groundwork for the future.
Here's what I've learned in the past few years about how to go for the title in higher ed finance.
Higher Ed Financial Planning Today: What's the State of Play?
In my time with Allitix, I've been in the proverbial locker room with plenty of higher education leaders as they've drawn up their planning strategies.
The goals for all of these institutions are generally the same — create a planning approach that will deliver clear, actionable insights. Of course, the actual tactics necessary to reach the end zone will differ widely from one school to another.
While every institution is unique, one thing that tends to be consistent is the list of issues tripping coaches up while they're trying to become better at planning. In game terms, problems tend to come not from major execution errors but simple equipment failures.
What does that mean? Typically, higher ed administrators find themselves dealing with technologies that don't communicate well. This incompatibility leads to extra stress and effort for everyone, so correcting it must be a top priority.
Common examples of tech issues include:
Planning functions spread across multiple tech tools: enterprise resource planning (ERP) platforms, forecasting programs and online or offline spreadsheets.
A time- and labor-intensive process to move data between those systems.
Weak communication and collaboration due to the tech disconnect.
These issues are all too frequent, but it's not impossible to fix them. With the right mindset and resources, you can craft an approach that will make the next financial year smoother than the one that's just ended.
Goals for Optimized Higher Ed Planning: Rewriting the Playbook
Creating a new and better approach to higher ed planning means addressing all the issues point by point, building an airtight strategy to improve your performance in the year to come. Think of it as creating a game plan that will help you beat a well-known opponent. During the offseason, you can retool your strategy and go for the win.
In real terms, higher ed administrators should take a few specific actions to tackle the most common planning shortcomings and come out strong with a playbook for the new season. This means:
Using dedicated planning software. A technology platform designed with planning in mind can link all the different systems in the tech stack, so the disparate pieces of software play nicely together.
Unifying finance, enrollment and HR teams' tech use. Not only should your higher ed institution have a dedicated planning solution in place, but you should also make sure all relevant stakeholders are using that tech tool, breaking out of silos to become true teammates.
Customizing technology to suit the school's needs: The most effective planning solutions are customizable. This means they can directly address your specific analysis and data management needs, rather than giving you a generic experience.
If you've handled a fiscal year without a tech-enabled planning method, you'll immediately see the value of adopting the right systems. Departments and teams that once struggled to get on the same page can work as a seamless unit, and tech tools that existed in silos can become part of a complementary suite.
Once you've built up a unified playbook and educated everyone on it, you'll be ready to go for the win, not just struggle to keep up.
Customized Planning Solutions: A Tailored Training Regimen
Planning solutions don't come out of the box prepared to provide ideal, optimized value to users. This is where customization comes in, helping you adjust the system to deliver the exact results your higher ed institution needs.
On the field, not every team calls the same plays, because every roster is unique. Today, even training and conditioning strategies are customized to perfectly suit the personnel, the game plan and the organization's overall philosophy. The same goes for business technology. The exact right choice for your needs won't fit another user as well.
As for the variables to keep in mind when implementing a customized planning platform, these include:
The institution's size, in terms of enrollment and faculty.
The nature of the school — public or private.
The administrative structure and other organizational details.
When planning technology has been optimized to fit into your institution's specific fiscal needs, and all the appropriate users have been trained to use it, you stand the best chance of success. Just like a well-tailored strategy can help get the most out of every player for the big game, taking a careful approach to planning is an ideal way to allocate your financial team's resources.
Working with Allitix
When it comes to higher ed planning, this isn't Allitix's first ballgame. We have a practice that specializes in higher education technology implementation, and we come with a winning track record. The Allitix team has the proverbial championship rings to prove our expertise, after helping schools of all sizes and descriptions take on their fiscal end-of-year matters with style and ease.
This offseason, you can huddle up with Allitix to implement a customized Anaplan implementation. Anaplan is the industry-leading planning platform, and it's at its best when it receives tweaks and adjustments to fit an organization's exact objectives and team composition. That's the level of service you get from Allitix.
It's the ideal time to refresh your playbook and aim for the big win in the next financial year. Contact us to talk about next steps.