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Budget and Financial Planning Department Spotlight

What are the key functions and services of Budget and Financial Planning? 

At Â鶹´å, the Budget and Financial Planning Office is more than the steward of the university’s annual operating and capital budgets—it is the institution’s strategic hub for financial planning, analysis, and decision support. We think of ourselves as one of the key financial translators at the university. Our work provides the insights and foresight needed to align resources with long-term goals and position the university for sustainable success. 

Through cross-campus collaboration, integrated forecasting, and scenario modeling, we provide leaders with financial clarity and optionality to support innovation, research, and academic excellence. Our mission extends beyond the numbers: by translating complexity into actionable insights, we enable bold, data-driven decisions in a dynamic higher education landscape.

Key functions of the Budget and Financial Planning Office include:

• Leading campus-wide financial planning using Oracle Enterprise Performance Management (EPM), including budgeting, forecasting, and long-term scenario modeling.
• Developing, analyzing, and reporting on university-wide operating forecasts, budgets, risks, and opportunities.
• Leading and delivering analytical insights that support aligning campus financial needs with the university’s strategic goals.
• Conducting financial analysis to understand trends, variances, and emerging issues impacting the university’s financial health.

How does Budget and Financial Planning support the Finance Division’s mission “To provide strategic, predictive, data-informed financial service and guidance to address challenges, explore opportunities, and ensure the university's financial sustainability?” 

The Budget and Financial Planning Office supports the Finance Division’s mission by applying advanced Financial Planning and Analysis (FP&A) practices — such as scenario analysis, dynamic forecasting, and contingency planning — that enable us to assess impacts on the university’s financial statements and create effective multi-year plans. These forward-thinking practices encourage us to identify risks and opportunities sooner and help ensure organizations have plans in place not just to achieve their goals, but to maintain resilience and flexibility in an increasingly complex higher education landscape. 

By continuously improving tools and processes—such as the implementation of Oracle EPM—we help increase agility, enhance campus-wide financial acumen, and strengthen partnerships with academic and administrative units. 

How does your team interact, collaborate, and engage with other departments across campus?

We collaborate closely with university leadership, academic and administrative units, and finance managers across campus through annual budget preparation and university-level financial analysis.

This university’s annual budget process begins each fall and concludes with a budget presentation to the Board of Trustees in May. It integrates input from academic and administrative units, assesses performance against budget, and guides future planning. In collaboration with the Controller’s Office and Treasury, we analyze university financial trends and develop long-term financial projections—including balance sheet and cash flow—to support strategic decision-making and maintain stakeholder trust. Campus-wide engagement ensures financial data aligns with priorities, emerging needs, and institutional goals, resulting in a forward-looking financial plan. 

We also partner with the Office of the CIO and the Office of the Vice Provost for Institutional Effectiveness and Planning on Data@Â鶹´å, a collaborative effort to foster data integration and develop services to enable the strategic use of our institutional data to make informed decisions and enhance growth.  

Ultimately, our team works to build trust with campus stakeholders and support them by providing financial insights that help guide strategic initiatives.

What is your department most proud of accomplishing in the last few years?

We’re most proud of leading the Future of Financial Planning initiative, a multi-phase budget and financial planning project that included the successful implementation of Oracle EPM. The Oracle EPM implementation modernized a patchwork of manual, disconnected processes with a single, unified platform that supports real-time collaboration, agile forecasting, and long-range financial planning strategy — empowering departments to make decisions that are more fully informed by financial data. We trained over 150 campus planners and onboarded them into Oracle EPM, and a Change Champions Network comprising financial leaders across units continues to advocate for greater adoption of Oracle EPM at the unit level.

We are proud to have played a role in evolving Â鶹´å’s budget and financial planning capabilities in recent years and are grateful to our campus partners for their critical contributions in implementing and using Oracle EPM during the past two budget cycles.

Which Finance Division values does your department most exemplify?

• • Collaborative Innovation: We collaborate across campus to co-develop forward-looking financial strategies and implement tools that enhance planning and transparency. The successful rollout of Oracle EPM—driven by strong cross-campus partnerships—marked a major step forward in financial stewardship. 
  • High Quality Service: We deliver high quality service by being trusted business partners on critical initiatives, who provide timely, data-informed insights and strengthen financial acumen across campus through training and support such as regular office hours and small group sessions, curated online training journeys, and a comprehensive library of resources.
  • Strength in Execution:  We turn financial insights into action, delivering analysis that drives value and supports Â鶹´å’s agility and ability to meet the challenges of a shifting landscape. To navigate the headwinds facing higher education, we work closely with university leaders by modeling risk scenarios and translating complex policy shifts into strategic proposals that support research, compliance, and long-term financial stability. Our work enables swift, confident decision-making across the institution.

  Through modern tools and processes, collaborative partnerships, and forward-looking financial analysis, we help propel the university mission, adapt to emerging challenges, and drive meaningful impact across campus. Together with our campus partners, we are shaping a resilient, agile, and future-ready Â鶹´å.