Pilbara Insights SOC 2 Type II Compliance

We are excited to announce that we have achieved SOC 2 Type II compliance in accordance with American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) standards for SOC for Service Organizations also known as SSAE 18. Achieving this standard with an unqualified opinion serves as third-party industry validation that Pilbara Group provides enterprise-level security for customer’s […]

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Emissions Reduction not just Reporting!

Last week I presented at the CAM-I quarterly meeting 11-13 September 2023 in Tyson’s Corner, VA.  I was thrilled to be joined by Professor Robert Kaplan (Harvard University) and Mike Mahoney (CEO E-Liability Institute) who co-presented with me and provided an overview of their E-liability methodology. We also celebrated CAM-I’s 50th anniversary, it was great to […]

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Top Ten Lessons Learnt from Over Two Decades of Building Activity-Based Cost Models

Activity-Based Costing (ABC) can provide tremendous insight into the financial performance of your organization. However, it has had a checkered past due to factors including the complexity of models and the large amount of manual effort required to maintain these models. Activity-Based Costing also fell out of favor due to very low interest rates and […]

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AI and Higher Ed Academic Program Management

There has been a remarkable surge in Artificial Intelligence (AI) usage, generating a significant amount of news and interest. The utilization of ChatGPT has skyrocketed, and new tools emerge regularly, aiding in the creation of images, videos, music, and short films. Microsoft has introduced their co-pilots to assist with code generation, writing Word documents, creating […]

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A CIOs Guide to Higher Ed Strategic Cost Management

While reading EDUCAUSE’s latest article on the Top 10 IT issues for 2023, I came across the top-ranked issue – A Seat at the Table, which emphasizes the importance of ensuring that IT leadership is a full partner in institutional strategic planning. Given the current economic climate, with increasing interest rates and inflation, Strategic Cost […]

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Supporting the Green Transition with Activity-Based Costing!

According to a recent IFAC report, only 24% of companies with plans to reduce or offset Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions factor in past or future expenses for implementing those plans. This suggests that 76% of companies are pretty much flying blind when it comes to the costs of executing plans to reduce emissions, we want […]

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Reducing Academic Workload

Last week, I read a blog post by Alex Usher titled “Reducing Work” where he suggests some ways universities can make teaching more efficient. These include: Driving down the real cost of wages by keeping wage rises below inflation, Dropping the average rate of pay per instructor, by increasing the sessional teaching load, Changing the […]

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Top Podcasts and Blogs for 2022

  OK, so I’m a little late with my “Best Of 2022” post, given it’s almost the end of January now, but I believe I’m still allowed to say “Happy New Year” as long as I post this in January it’s all good! So, Happy New Year to you all. I’ve analyzed the data for […]

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The Annual Higher Ed Budgeting Process is Broken!

TLDR The annual budgeting process is broken but can be fixed using centuries old techniques. Using demand for products/services to create budgets, not last year’s budget as a baseline. The critical component is to properly calculate fully-burdened Unit Costs. The budgeting process can be changed in stages, starting with Academic Program financial forecasts. It’s important […]

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Top 5 Higher Ed Financial Reports

I was thrilled to be invited to present at the 2022 Australian University Senior Finance Officers Group (AUSFOG) conference last week alongside Thomas King from Microsoft.  I was asked to present the reports that finance departments are actually using, so we took a look at 12 months of Power BI usage data to see which […]

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