Tackling budget fatigue

Founded in 1897 and situated in New Zealand’s vibrant, entrepreneurial capital city, Victoria University of Wellington (VUoW) is one of New Zealand’s oldest and most prestigious tertiary institutions with a proud tradition of academic excellence. With more than 22,000 students, VUoW comprises three campuses and eight faculties and aspires to be one of the greatest capital city civic universities in the world.

Business challenges

In the face of increasing competition, higher education providers are under pressure to deliver superior student experiences and think strategically and innovatively about future directions, all while making tight budgets go further.

With complex and fragmented legacy systems, models and processes, there was significant replication of work across the university. Planning and budgeting processes were duplicated, with little quality and assurance of data. The university was constantly firefighting to fix budgeting and forecasting issues, with deadlines consistently missed or extended.

With no real system integrations, VUoW knew it was time to upgrade. To enable better business planning decisions, VUoW recognised that it needed to seamlessly connect its finance operations with all areas of the business. The educator needed a solution to streamline, standardise and improve its business processes, whilst offering options for future expansion.

Solution

When VUoW started to think about progressing its new planning and budgeting solution, a number of implementation partners were considered. DXC Red Rock, part of DXC Technology’s global Oracle team, was selected by the university.

As a long-standing Oracle user, VUoW had recently selected Oracle Cloud for HCM so it made sense to select Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) for planning and budgeting since it aligned with current direction. As an incredibly happy Oracle E-Business Suite customer for 20 years, VUoW didn’t feel the need for an extensive evaluation.

Oracle Planning is the world’s leading planning, budgeting, forecasting and analytics solution, with functionality that has the potential to transform how organisations use financial data. To enhance the Oracle solution, DXC Red Rock implemented its unique Oracle Planning Accelerate Template for Higher Education.

The suite of pre-built templates leverage DXC Red Rock’s in-depth knowledge of the higher education sector, functional and technical IP built up over many years, and trusted partner relationship with Oracle. They allow organisations to get up and running quicker, while providing a best practice industry guideline. The templates are designed to help clients take an integrated approach to key tasks, such as budgeting and forecasting, student load modelling, student analysis, activity-based costing, research funding and performance improvement.

DXC Red Rock managed the entire implementation from roadmaps and scoping through to implementation and change management, working closely with VUoW to drive significant innovation. Close collaboration ensured DXC understood where the business is headed and the latest technologies it was looking to invest in.

VUoW went live after just six months. The first milestone was design and validation, followed by build and validation, UAT, then implementation planning and execution. Training was another challenge since people were new to the system and didn’t feel confident. DXC delivered an entire week of intense online training via MS Teams.

Business benefits

While it’s still early days at VUoW, there has been significant positive user feedback – particularly around reduced complexity. There is better understanding of the models, less fatigue and more excitement around budgeting. Users report that models are easier to understand and interact with which leads to less time forecasting and increased productivity. Where previously, people may have been suspicious of the numbers, there is now increased positivity and confidence in the numbers being produced. Governance around the whole forecasting process has also improved.

The integration and connected processes across various applications means departments no longer work in silos. VUoW now have a system that can adapt to changing business needs and are confident the processes can change and the system will cope.

DXC has become a trusted partner engaged for further expansion and migration to drive innovation across the business. As one of the first cloud solutions implemented in the business, the success of this project will drive other IT digital transformation initiatives. VUoW now has a system that works well for core financials, with continuous improvement programs looking at new options for strategic modelling, profitability and cost management functionality. This will ensure maximum value is extracted from the Oracle investment.

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