To deliver a quick and demonstrable return on investment (ROI), budgeting and forecasting and financial planning tools must adapt to a higher education institution’s unique needs while delivering best-in-class features and performance.

Hobson & Company, a third-party research organization focused on total cost of ownership and ROI studies, conducted in-depth interviews with higher education institutions and found that Syntellis’ Axiom™ Budgeting & Forecasting and Axiom™ Long-Range Planning solutions delivered significant efficiency improvements in budgeting, reporting, and scenario modeling while reducing staffing costs and operating expenses.

 


 

Monetary benefits of Axiom Budgeting & Forecasting and Long-Range Planning to a typical higher education institution

By using Syntellis’ Axiom™ Budgeting & Forecasting and Axiom™ Long-Range Planning, a typical higher education institution with $1 billion in annual revenue, $1 billion in operating expenses, and compensation expenses of $667 million would:

see a payback in 4.3 months

+ generate a return on investment (ROI) of 438% over three years.

 

50% less time in creating budgets

Axiom Budgeting & Forecasting users report that the integration with HR, student, and GL systems, built-in workflow capabilities, and role-based security reduce the time they spend collecting data and completing budgets.

“The data is compiled instantaneously. We can pull last year’s budget, make changes, run a process and the budget is created automatically. We now have approval workflows in a central location.”  

— Financial Systems Director, 4-year public university

 



40% less time creating and distributing financial reports

Axiom users save time with automated report creation and drill-down features that easily show transaction-level detail. Because Axiom pulls data from the ERP, users have a one-stop shop for all financial data.

“The data we pull from the system is accurate, which is a big-time savings. We are confident in the data because it is being pulled directly from our ERP, our ‘system of record.’"

— Budget Manager, community college

0.5% fewer salary expenses

Axiom™ Labor Planning empowers users with sophisticated salary and benefits evaluation tools that leverage their institution’s human resources and payroll data; handle multiple fringe benefit rates and funding sources; and evaluate employee mix, shared and pooled positions, and vacancy reallocations.

“Axiom allows us to identify which departments have too many staff or too few, enabling us to reduce overall administrative FTEs by 4%-5%.”
 
— CFO, large private university


 



0.25% lower operating expenses

Axiom Long-Range Planning users say they can easily model multiple scenarios and develop mid- and long-term financial plans that align with strategic goals. Dashboards show the impact of external factors so stakeholders can make informed decisions that result in new/improved revenue streams and better allocation of financial resources.

“We avoided millions in costs by modeling different scenarios in Axiom.”

— Director of Budget Services, private research university

 

Disclaimer: The return on investment (ROI) and other financial calculations performed by Hobson & Co. are based on data provided by Syntellis Performance Solutions’ clients and various assumptions and estimates only. The actual ROI realized by clients may vary from the estimates provided. Syntellis offers this tool to assist clients with evaluating performance management solutions; however, Syntellis and Hobson & Company are not responsible for the accuracy of any estimates.

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