Finance Work Group

*This group and sub-groups are now inactive* 

The Finance Work Group was formed to enhance such critical functions as budgeting, accounting, procurement and management reporting. The team, made up of campus staff administrators from academic departments as well as central units, has been charged by the Chancellor to design, develop and implement more efficient and effective ways to carry out the finance functions of the University.  

After getting broad-based input from all stakeholders including faculty and staff, the group is achieving this goal by evaluating policies, redesigning processes, developing new and enhanced systems, and coordinating efforts across organizational boundaries. One specific program already underway is the Management Financial Reporting and Budgeting Project, which will provide a new set of reports for managing a PI's funding portfolio.  

The priorities of the group include:

• Evaluate policies and procedures
  • Streamline processes and procedures
  • Standardize and eliminate redundant functions
  • Eliminate unnecessary policies and practices

• Identify tools to enable process redesign
  • Identify and implement common tools
  • Optimize transactional efficiency
  • Standardize financial and management reporting

• Provide training and resources
  • Provide standardized training
  • Offer clearly defined opportunities for career growth for Finance staff

• Recommend organizational changes
  • Design a partnership strategy
  • Research benchmarks to establish service level and cost targets
  • Complete a current state analysis and compare to external benchmarking

Because of the scope and complexities of these priorities and the dependence upon systems, the work of this group will be ongoing.

The Finance work group continues to work on the very complex and challenging financial functions of the University.  They have formed two subgroups: Process and a combined Data/Benchmarking and Cluster/Partnership.  The members of Finance work group and the subgroups are listed below.