This document discusses budgeting software alternatives to Excel for universities. It provides an overview of Hyperion Planning, which Stanford University uses to facilitate budget entry, monitoring, reforecasting, and reporting. Key benefits include consolidated access to data, built-in reporting capabilities, and the ability to perform "what-if" analyses. The document also briefly outlines other budgeting software options for smaller or larger implementations from vendors such as Alight Planning, Prophix, and Adaptive Planning.

1. Moving beyond Excel: Budget
Entry, Monitoring, and
Reforecasting
Dr. Andrew Harker
Director of Budget
Management

2.  (Used without permission)
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3. Excel: A Necessary Evil
Universally used
Very flexible
Uncontrollable
A nightmare to “consolidate”
Distributed files; no version control
Excel will probably never be fully out of
the equation
Users will always want to export/import
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4. What should a budget system do?
 Salary planning across cost centers
 Annotation/line-item detail
 Consolidation & distribution
 Easy to add additional units, cost
centers, natural classifications
 Be able to tag data with attributes (e.g. fund
type, level of restriction)
 Be able to report dynamically in rows and
columns
 Be able to handle Fund Accounting
 Ability to do “what-if?” analysis
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5. The Marketplace
 Larger scale implementations: (e.g. > $100k)
 Oracle: Hyperion Planning, Hyperion Strategic
Finance
 www.oracle.com/hyperion
 Prophix
 www.prophix.com
 Smaller scale, smaller budget: (e.g. < $100k)
 Alight Planning
 www.alightplanning.com
 Prophix Express
 www.prophix.com
 Adaptive Planning
 www.adaptiveplanning.com
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6. A Case Study
How Stanford has used Oracle’s Hyperion
Planning for six years for budget
formulation, reforecasting, monitoring, an
d variance analysis
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7. Overview
Using Hyperion Planning, Stanford has
brought discipline and analytical ability to
its on-going budget monitoring and
reforecasting processes with more utility
and less pain than using Excel
We have a process that facilitates financial
information flow and analysis up and
down the decision-making hierarchy
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8. Budgeting at Stanford
$4.0B in Revenues and Expense
~30 decentralized budget units
~350 end users
>50k cost centers; >10k employees
Fund Accounting standards
High-level forecasting several
months before detailed budget
exercise
“Top-down” and “Bottom-up”
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9. How are funds budgeted?
OB Designated
Grants &
Contracts
Auxiliary Service
Center Endowed
University
UR Gifts
Detailed Budgets, usually to “Pooled” budgets at
Budgeted at combination of department and fund
specific cost center and
specific CC and “Pools” at type level, at detailed
natural account level, and
department and fund type codes
position level
level, at detailed codes
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10.  (Used without permission)
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11. Concepts/Rationale
 Hyperion is an excellent tool for analysis of
summarized data
 Generates fast results for known retrieval patterns
 Consolidation of all units is easy
 Instant access to data submitted
 Don’t have to wait for linking of spreadsheets
 Good roll-up and drill-through capability
 “Slicing & dicing” capabilities beyond those of Excel
 We design standard reports and data entry
forms/templates for all the units to use
 It facilitates on-going reforecasting and analysis of
trends
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12. Organization of the Data
Aggregate data is entered and stored
in the system by:
Budget Unit
Fund Type
Year
Scenario (e.g. Budget Plan, Booked
Budget)
Version (Bottom-up, Top-down)
Budget Category (revenue & expense)
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13. The Hyperion Workspace
Access to both
reports and data
controlled by
security
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14. Budget Entry Portal Screen: Table of Contents
We have organized forms
into “like” types of data for
all of the cost centers for
which someone is
responsible
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15. Budget Entry: Non-Salary
Using Cell Text
to make notes
Data can be
exported to Excel
Using Supporting Detail, users
can annotate a particular entry
or build up a calculation such
as cost per person times
number of people
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16. Budget Entry: Salary Percent Distribution
Salaries are calculated using $
times % charged to each cost
center
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17. Consolidation & Distribution
The system has an
organizational
outline/hierarchy
that facilitates drill-
down and drill-up
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18. Budget Analysis & Reporting using Hyperion: “cross-tab” views
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19. Budget Analysis & Reporting using Hyperion: “time series” views
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20. Budget Analysis & Reporting using Hyperion: “slicing & dicing”
Using the Point of View, users can
change the data the report is looking at
Related Content (“links”) let you drill
down to lower levels of detail directly
from this report
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21. Variance Analysis & Reforecasting Process
 Stored within Hyperion:
 High-level Budget Plan
 9/1 Consolidated Budget (12 months of data from
Budget cycle)
 Year-end Projection
 Actuals (e.g. Sep ~ Mar of Actuals from Oracle)
 Goals:
 To identify and analyze variances from budget
 To enable complex “slicing & dicing” of budget
and actuals data
 To create a Rolling Forecast (Sep ~ Mar Actuals +
Apr ~ Aug Budget) with capability to adjust
remaining budget numbers
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22. Rube Goldberg’s Pencil Sharpener
Open window (A) and fly kite (B). String (C) lifts small door (D) allowing moths (E) to escape
and eat red flannel shirt (F). As weight of shirt becomes less, shoe (G) steps on switch (H)
which heats electric iron (I) and burns hole in pants (J). Smoke (K) enters hole in tree
(L), smoking out opossum (M) which jumps into basket (N), pulling rope (O) and lifting cage
(P), allowing woodpecker (Q) to chew wood from pencil (R), exposing lead. Emergency knife
(S) is always handy in case opossum or the woodpecker gets sick and can't work
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23. Previous Variance Analysis Process
Bus
Oracle Objects
Star Schema
(Actuals) Query
Bus
Objects
Collection
Hyperion
(Budgets) Star Schema
Excel
DSS
Data Warehouse
UBO reviewed each Units emailed Excel
SS and then loaded Analysis by Units Visual
SS to UBO Basic
into Hyperion
Macro
Variance Report Spreadsheets
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24. The budget monitoring process using Hyperion
Hyperion BI+
Oracle
EDW / Business
(Actuals)
Objects
UBO enters
“top-down”
forecast/budget Hyperion
into Hyperion
Analysis Since Hyperion will
Units enter their by Units only hold data at a
analysis/forecasts certain level of
into Hyperion detail, transactional
reporting
Ad-hoc environment
Budget, Variance, analysis & provides queries for
& Reforecast reporting analysis when more
Reports (printed & detail is needed
on-line)
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25. The Variance Report
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26. Viewing information by fund type
Categorization of
similar types of
Cost Centers
(attributes of the
members)
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27. Changing your view on the fly
Select a different
organizational unit
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28. Developing reports for analysis
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29. Looking at Historical Progression
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30. Delving into the data
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31. Creating analytical reports
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32. Investigating the data
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33. Investigating the data
A hyperlink launches
another report that
shows where this
data comes from
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34. Units submit their analysis text via Hyperion
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35. Reports to aid in reforecasting
“Run-rate” Report: How much of last year’s total expense did the first 4 months
represent?
The user can use this to help project out the current year.
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36. What we have gained: the benefits
 A web-based budget formulation and reporting system
 Accessible from home/wherever
 A dynamic, yet controlled, system
 Better control over integrity of metadata
 “Real-time” access to budget entry progress
 Much greater ability to monitor the budget along the way
 Better budget process management
 Greater flexibility in report design
 Better ability to report on Consolidated Budget
 No software overhead on user machines
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37. “The Fine Print”
 Scalability is always at the forefront
 We have to manage the system around the large number of
cost centers and positions we budget to
 We have multiple databases (“applications”) which keep
performance optimal
 Storing low-level detail for units must be spread across several
applications, and high level information for all units must be
consolidated into one application
 Significant infrastructure and IT support needs
 Although the management and setup of the system is in our
control
 Windows-based: IE 6/7 or Firefox 2
 Mac users need dual-boot Intel machines
 The tool will not address skill issues
 We still have fundamental issues around training non-financial
people to do financial work
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38. Leveraging the Tool
 Our Land & Buildings division has developed an application to
calculate and forecast out charge-out rates
 Developed by an analyst who moved over from my department
 We are developing an application that will allow units to forecast
out endowment principal growth and payout, using the university’s
central assumptions and adding their own projections of new
gifts, liquidations, and variations from our central assumptions
 We are implementing Oracle’s Hyperion Financial Management for
external financial statement reporting
 We hope to develop integrations between fund accounting based-
budgets and GAAP-based financial statements
 We are working on developing high-level long-range forecasting
models using Oracle’s Hyperion Strategic Finance
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39. Alight Customers 150+
Business Services Construction Technology
B2B CFO EnerCrest Verizon
CFP Ventures MB Petroleum Services Schoolwires
EBMS McBurney Corporation iParadigms
G&A Partners Biscayne Aquaculture Sales Team Live
Hunter Warfield CMTS Inc. Apptix
Health Care
Higher Education Wholesale/Retail
Kaiser Permanente Penn State Gap/Athleta
Pittsburgh Mercy Nat’l Univ Singapore Capespan
Healthcare Partners Kona Grill
Marywood University
Precision Therapeutics Merillat Industries
Royal Berkshire Bates Technical College Old Port Cigars
Tufts Medical Center
Manufacturing Non-Profit Other
Haws Corporation Calif Academy Sciences Down East Enterprises
Nycomed Airlift Northwest Swan/Dolphin at Disney
Ice River Springs Jobs for the Future Two Chefs on a Roll
Kuehne Chemical Covenant House Monterey Gourmet Foods
Weyerhaeuser Open Learning Exchange Odom’s Tenn Pride
© 2009 Alight Planning Slide 39

40. Alight’s Use by Campus Size
© 2009 Alight Planning Slide 40

41. Custom Revenue Recognition
© 2009 Alight Planning Slide 41

42. Driver Based Planning– Any Higher Ed Metric
© 2009 Alight Planning Slide 42

43. Alight Background
 The Team
 Rand Heer, founder of Pillar (acquired by Hyperion then Oracle)
 Management and development team is heavy Pillar
 Pillar had great success in Higher Education
 Alight Positioning
 Alight founded in 2004, product launch in 2006
 Incorporates best components of Pillar
 Unit-Rate Amount structure is great fit for Higher Ed
 Targets configurations of up to 100 users
 Low-cost integrated solution for capital planning, annual
budgeting, rolling forecast, and long-range planning
© 2009 Alight Planning Slide 43

44. Alight Meets Planning Requirements
Planning in Higher-Ed Requires:
 Modeling unique activity drivers
 Students and cohorts
 Retention rates
 Student/faculty ratios
 What-if analysis
 Changing tuition rates
 Modifying faculty-student ratios
 Launching new academic programs
 Streamlined reporting
 Custom time periods for academic calendars
 Integrate with academic accounting packages (e.g. Banner)
 Quickly slice & dice by program, campus, fund, etc.
© 2009 Alight Planning Slide 44

45. Alight Planning in Higher Education
School Use Case
 Penn State University  Capital Planning
 Tufts Medical Center  Budgeting & Allocations
 Bates Technical College  Capital Planning
 Nat’l Univ of Singapore  5-Yr Forecast
 Marywood University  Annual Budget & 5-Yr
Forecast
© 2009 Alight Planning Slide 45

46. Adaptive Planning
Web-based
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47. Prophix Software
 Higher Ed Clients include:
 Wayne State University
 Golden Gate University
 Lincoln Educational Services
 The Jewish Theological Seminary
 http://www.prophix.com/customers/industry/education/
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48.  (Used without permission)
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49. Contact
 Andrew Harker, Ed.D.
 Director of Budget Management
 University Budget Office
 Stanford University
 E-mail: aharker@stanford.edu
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