Yale University is a complex organization of numerous business units, from academic departments and professional schools to housing and museums. To streamline and standardize the budgeting and planning process, Finance worked with schools, centers, programs, libraries, museums, and administrative support functions to transition the university to one integrated solution. After considering multiple enterprise performance management solutions, Yale selected Axiom™ software to meet its requirements.
An intuitive system that empowers users
The university’s budgeting, forecasting, and monitoring is performed by 450 users. Excel is widely used among financial staff, with some users having sophisticated skills. The finance team needs to support users with different reporting requirements — some wanting to dig down into granular detail and others who need a high-level snapshot. And they all need quick and easy access to the data. Axiom meets the needs of every user with a self-service Excel interface. Users can easily create and manage all forms of budgeting and reporting for their departments, while Finance gets a complete overall picture.
A streamlined, flexible budgeting platform
With so many different business requirements and users, a flexible budgeting system is crucial to the university. Axiom streamlines the budgeting process with highly automated workflow capabilities that eliminate the pitfalls and chaos of stand-alone spreadsheets. The budgeting platform offers configurable, Excel-based models that can be easily adapted to a specific department’s needs.
Robust reporting to support decision-making
Department-level users must perform a variety of budgeting tasks and access a full spectrum of reports, from formalized monthly financial statements and variance reports to ad hoc analysis. Axiom helps Yale to provide detailed, department-level reporting and executive-level reports across the university. The platform also provides powerful drill-down and drill-through capabilities, enabling ad hoc analysis for end-users. Axiom software is designed for ultimate flexibility and agility.
Results
Yale University has an intuitive, flexible, and powerful budgeting and planning platform that meets the requirements of its complex organizational structure. The many diverse programs and operating units are integrated on one system for a complete overall financial picture. With Axiom, Yale’s large number of unique users can better perform the tasks required to run their individual departments.
"Axiom will continue to be a critical part of Yale’s strategy in the future and the finance team is already thinking about additional ways to extend the value of the platform — including comprehensive labor reporting and analysis."