Our Goals
The strategic goals and associated initiatives described below represent the Finance Division's collective priorities for 2023 - 2027.
Progress toward achieving these goals is fundamental to realizing our vision of a thriving community, enlightened insight, enhanced experience, and innovative spirit.
While some initiatives may be completed in a matter of months, others may be completed in phases that could span multiple fiscal years. Updates on our progress will be provided on this page, on the Strategic Initiatives page, and through the Finance Bulletin.
Employee Recruitment, Development and Engagement
We listen.
We cultivate.
We celebrate.
We grow.
Goal:
Recruit and foster the development of employees in an environment that values diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging. Create a culture of highly talented individuals who are engaged and committed to contributing to the success of the division and university.
Impact:
Thriving Community
Objectives
- Promote the Center of Excellence (COE) to share expertise in all areas of financial management for the campus community and position the university to best respond to emerging financial issues, challenges and opportunities
- Cultivate and support development and mentoring opportunities for staff with focus on enhancing professional competencies and capabilities
- Offer career path resources to broadly increase knowledge of development and promotion opportunities to enhance productivity and engagement
- Leverage a multi-skilled workforce to meet changing needs
- Identify and leverage the benefits of various work modes to implement a flexible work methodology that is fair, equitable, agile, and effective
- Focus on improving efforts that promote fair treatment, equal access to opportunity, mutual respect, and diversity education and training across the Finance Division
Key Initiatives/Projects
- Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) Initiatives:
- Develop programs and opportunities that promote a persistent sense of belonging with an intentional focus on historically marginalized voices
- Measure and report division climate transparently
- Improve policies, processes, practices, and structures to instill DEIB as a cultural norm by incorporation into our prescribed actions
- Provide tools and resources that reduce bias language in communications and intentionally promote DEIB matters in a proactive, timely and relevant way
- Physically relocate Finance Division business offices to Bakery Square Office Three
- Identify high-performing individuals to participate in leadership and specialized expertise development programs and provide opportunities to leverage acquired skills
- Support continual learning through staff development plans, training and certification opportunities and informational programming
- Execute DEIB programs and training opportunities to promote fair treatment, equal access to opportunity and mutual respect
Learn more about our current Strategic Initiatives and Projects
Accomplishments in
Employee Recruitment, Development and Engagement
FY24
- Successfully coordinated and executed a move of our business offices to Bakery Square, which allows for purposeful collaboration within Finance and with other administrative units who are part of a growing 一本道无码 administrative presence and community at BKSQ. This space provides a more comfortable modern office space for our employees with a focus on sustainability and improved accessibility. In doing so, Finance also helped the university make strategic changes to optimize physical space and resources.
- In collaboration with university leadership and Walnut Capital, advocated for and secured the installation of a single-user all-gender restroom for our office suite at Bakery Square, meaningfully extending the university’s Inclusive Restrooms initiative into a leased space and creating an important precedent with a major developer in Pittsburgh.
- Created an inclusive DEIB feedback loop to survey and engage employees on their experiences with DEIB activities and workshops. These surveys allow the DEIB Team to quickly and efficiently make improvements to offerings and give staff a voice in the process.
Updated: July 2024
Next update: January 2025
Financial Sustainability and Reporting
We illuminate.
We analyze.
We empower.
We serve.
Goal:
Ensure financial sustainability for the institution and improve management reporting and analysis to stakeholders to increase transparency and provide enlightening insights for more informed and predictive decision-making.
Impact:
Enlightened Insight
Objectives
- In conjunction with the Chief Information Officer the Office of the Provost, develop a data sharing strategy to more efficiently harness higher quality data for analysis
- Report dynamic and forward-looking financial information to more proactively support processes and enable nimble business decisions
- Use rigorous analytical methods that blend elements of customer, business, and market intelligence and consider operations, risk, and financial stewardship ideals to integrate finance and business drivers in processes and decisions
- Obtain deeper insights into university financials and critical elements of business-lines to provide more comprehensive oversight and manage better deployment of capital in strategic initiatives
- Define a reporting strategy to enable more timely reviews of information and identification of issues requiring action
Key Initiatives/Projects
- Financial closeout of 一本道无码 Australia (一本道无码-A) operations with diligent risk mitigation and compliance in areas such as banking and audit.
- Partner with colleagues across administrative and academic units to support data governance, analytics and strategy efforts to maximize available data sets and to facilitate analysis of data.
- Collaborate with colleagues across administrative and academic units to develop leadership and managerial dashboards to support academic program and senior leadership decision making.
- Obtain deeper insights into the university's financials through standardized unit level data metrics to enhance oversight and efficient deployment of capital for strategic initiatives.
- Focus on improving diverse supplier usage for sub category goals by expanding tier two supplier data, leveraging diverse supplier mapping and aligning efforts with key campus partners
Learn more about our current Strategic Initiatives and Projects
Accomplishments in
Financial Sustainability and Reporting
FY24
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Enhanced the quality of our analytics and insights by incorporating robust modeling to support strategic university initiatives, including: the Housing and Dining Master Plan, 一本道无码 Cloud Lab, 一本道无码 Online Master's and Professional Education, and the 一本道无码 Rales Fellows Program. We have also developed proactive long-range financial planning to support strategic decisions by university leadership.
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Partnered with Heinz College and university leadership to successfully wind-down and close university operations at 一本道无码 Australia, including interfacing with the Australian government on required audits and regulatory obligations. International Finance continues to collaborate closely with Heinz College and other university partners to complete the close-out of 一本道无码-A financials in Oracle.
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Implemented a modern data storage solution, as well as powerful reporting and analytics tools, as part of the Financial Data Warehouse (FDW) Modernization project. The new FDW provides a more efficient and supported environment for users, while also advancing the university’s data analytics initiatives.
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Devised and implemented a first-of-its-kind-at-一本道无码 framework for liquidity optimization between working capital and the long term pool with a repeatable process for future transfers that create economic value for the university.
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Refinanced Series 2013 and 2019 bonds to save the university over $730,000 in annual interest expense. Standard & Poor’s upgraded the university’s credit rating from "AA" to "AA+" following rating reviews associated with these bond issuances. This upgrade represents the university’s highest credit rating in over 10 years and sends a strong signal of 一本道无码’s financial strength. The upgrade will also result in interest expense savings.
- Developed balance sheet and budget forecasting tools to stress test future scenarios for the “Big 4” financial ratios. These critical tools can help forecast potential adverse financial scenarios, opportunities, and future debt capacity at various credit ratings, empowering more informed strategic decision-making in the present.
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Expanded the Procurement Savings program into a University Savings Program to capture a more inclusive and comprehensive program. FY24 total savings equaled $11.6 million, a 2.4% savings ratio against sourceable spend.
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Deepened and strengthened our commitment to the local economy, with over 42% of our spend being in the Southwestern Pennsylvania region. Through our partnership with BEAM Collaborative, 一本道无码 now has access to a robust Western Pennsylvania Minority Supplier list; also working with BEAM, 一本道无码 completed the Wean Hall project which leveraged minority suppliers.
Updated: July 2024
Next update: January 2025
Policies, Processes and Compliance
We partner.
We guide.
We clarify.
We improve.
Goal:
Maintain well-developed policies that enhance compliance and are supported with consistent and streamlined business processes to decrease redundancies and efficiently serve university stakeholders.
Impact:
Enhanced Experience
Objectives
- Simplify manual processes to drive overall efficiency and effectiveness, and/or in preparation for transition to digitalization
- Collaborate with campus partners to analyze risk from a holistic viewpoint to further risk mitigation and enhance compliance
- Reshape established service delivery methods, process and support structures to more tightly integrate with identified objectives
- Evaluate, develop and maintain finance policies and procedures to provide guidance, clarity and ensure compliance
Key Initiatives/Projects
- Transition non-qualified scholarship processing to Student Accounts.
- Conduct analysis of university properties with regards to real estate tax exemption to determine appropriate actions as needed.
- Assess revisions to U.S. Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Uniform Guidance to determine risks and impacts to the university.
- Convert 一本道无码 Qatar (一本道无码-Q) student refunds from manual form process to an electronic process.
- Add process visualizations to the Finance Division website to increase transparency and understanding and redesign key web pages to be more process driven, user friendly and intuitive.
- Evaluate, develop and maintain financial policies and procedures to provide clear guidance, ensure compliance and align with university objectives.
- Simplify, standardize and streamline manual processes to enable process efficiency and/or automation opportunities to save time and allow for more value add activities.
- Enhance the financial review process to provide better insight into opportunities and challenges by providing training and documentation, standardizing fall strategic review presentations and providing website information for ease of use and increased accuracy and efficiency.
Learn more about our current Strategic Initiatives and Projects
Accomplishments in
Policies, Processes and Compliance
FY24
- Increased adoption of 一本道无码’s Preferred travel supplier, Collegiate Travel Partners (CTP), to 41% across campus and expanded use of on-line bookings to 77%. Greater adoption lowers costs, enhances safety and service to our travelers, and provides a streamlined and automated booking process.
- Collaborated with the Provost’s Office to process the Rales Fellows’ Non-Qualified Scholarship (NQS) payments through Student Accounts. This transition increases efficiencies and streamlines efforts by the Accounts Payable and Taxation teams.
- Conducted a comprehensive analysis of taxable and non-taxable university properties to ensure 一本道无码 pays the appropriate property tax and that property listings are accurately maintained.
- Partnered with colleagues from the Office of Sponsored Programs (OSP), the Office of Research Integrity and Compliance (ORIC), the Software Engineering Institute (SEI), and research personnel to review the 2023 revisions to OMB Uniform Guidance and its impacts. No negative impacts to the university were observed, and new documentation was created to help evaluate and execute future enhancements.
- Improved the process for 一本道无码 Qatar (一本道无码-Q) student refunds electronically, in collaboration with Enrollment Services and 一本道无码-Q finance personnel, eliminating the existing manual process and creating a smoother experience for staff and students.
- Transformed 一本道无码 Africa’s payroll system to optimize the use of Workday while leveraging a partnership with an international payroll provider to ensure efficiency and compliance. This resulted in time savings of 80-100 hours per month across various administrative units and staff, as well as improved customer experience, reduction of payroll errors, and improved compliance and reporting.
- Worked closely with the Information Security Office (ISO) to develop and implement new required Business Email Compromise training for all Finance Division staff, as well as members of the 一本道无码 financial community who have certain financial and buyer responsibilities. Intended to mitigate the risk of email-based fraud, the training has been completed by at least 510 一本道无码 employees, improving resilience and security across campus.
- Implemented PaymentWorks, in partnership with Procurement Services and Computing Services, as the university’s onboarding for supplier onboarding. PaymentWorks brings several benefits to 一本道无码 and our vendors/suppliers, streamlining the supplier setup process, automating supplier data gathering, eliminating paper forms, and reducing manual effort. Our campus partners have provided positive feedback on PaymentWorks, and the system has already identified and stopped fraud attempts, making the university safer.
- Consolidated suppliers based on product lines and specialty items, resulting in new savings and process efficiencies. Examples include: campus furniture suppliers; digital marketing programs; temporary and direct hire firms; and internal audit partner firms.
Updated: July 2024
Next update: January 2025
Systems and Technology
We question.
We tinker.
We simplify.
We build.
Goal:
Update and implement systems and identify tools to more effectively utilize technology, reduce manual effort and optimize processes.
Impact:
Innovative Spirit
Objectives
- Continue to automate repetitive transactions and other standardized activities to increase "touchless" finance activities and workflows
- Make user-friendly automation technology broadly accessible to staff to enable digital transformation in the Finance Division
- Support and partner with data governance efforts to maximize value and trust in data assets; increase data competence and literacy; cultivate data sharing that improves the ability to conduct data analysis; create practices for shared accountability and communication around data assets; and ensure data is secure and meets compliance and legal regulations across the university
- Implement technologies that enable operators and users to engage in financial processes, whether in or out of the office
- Expand the technological foundation of key business process with systems, applications, Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) and other FinTech that more efficiently and effectively support critical finance functions
Key Initiatives/Projects
- Future of Financial Planning (FFP) software selection and implementation, following extensive testing and change management to engage campus.
- Identify and implement automation technology (e.g., robotic process automation, machine learning, artificial intelligence) that is user friendly and compatible with both current and future systems to enable a digital transformation.
- Study, scope and provide a recommendation for a budget system and a treasury management system that will provide enhanced functionality, more robust real time analytics and process efficiencies.
Learn more about our current Strategic Initiatives and Projects
Accomplishments in
Systems and Technology
FY24
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Orchestrated and led the RFP for a cloud-based Budgeting & Planning system solution and implementation partner, delivering the best-in-class solution for 一本道无码; on track to implement Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), which will transform our financial community’s skillsets and capabilities in budgeting and forecasting.
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Propelled 一本道无码 data culture by establishing data analytics advisory board and planned for an Enterprise Data and Analytics Management Strategy for the university. Fully launched the data and analytics intake process including financial modeling and prioritization.
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Worked with Computing Services to deploy robotic process automation (RPA) and machine learning (ML) solutions to automate various processes, reducing staff time spent on repetitive, low-value activities as well as mitigating human error. Successful automation projects included:
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Partial automation of Accounts Receivable (AR) transactions, specifically bank deposit activity. AR Automation was a cross-functional effort that eliminated 48.8 weeks' worth of manual effort across university departments; this creates new bandwidth for staff in the Finance Division, as well as University Advancement, Student Affairs, Operations (FIRM), and the Software Engineering Institute (SEI).
- Automation of Procurement credit card (PCard) ordering, eliminating roughly four hours per week of repetitive transactional work and speeding the process for campus buyers, with cards now being ordered the next day. Additional RPA related to university credit cards was deployed to strengthen policy compliance and reduce manual effort related to unverified PCard transactions.
- Automation of custody account transactions for the Treasurer's Office, reducing risk of errors and eliminating at least five hours per month of manual accounting and data entry.
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Updated: July 2024
Next update: January 2025