Following on from our post on ‘why’ institutions should be delving into Academic Program Financial Management, and last week’s post on data requirements, this week’s tip provides advice on the level of project support needed to support these models.

Tip 2 – Project Staffing (who is needed and why)

These types of models often require some fairly significant support for the initial build, but after that, the workload reduces assuming that good processes (i.e. documented data extract queries) have been put into practice.

To develop an Academic Program Financial Management model, a team with the following skill sets would be recommended:

• Project Manager – To keep the team aligned and deadlines hit, and to provide overall advice and guidance on the model and business rules to be developed. This person would ordinarily be someone with experience at the institution and someone who can easily liaise with finance and academic leaders with ease. Once the model has been developed, this role often morphs into the Model Manager.
• Model Manager – This person will have similar experience to the Project Manager but would be primarily responsible for the ongoing management and direction of the model. It would involve the continued development of business rules and assumptions and managing the model updates.
• Data Specialist – Responsible for sourcing data from the various source systems (Click here for the post on data requirements). Depending on the systems used, the available fields, and the quality of the data sets, there may be significant initial setup work in sourcing, cleansing and preparing the data. There may also be a need to establish data bridges between data sets, for example, timetabling data may use different buildings and room names to those stored in the Facility Management system.
• Coders – To be responsible for developing the technical platform to perform the calculations in the model. Typically, a Bottom-Up model is too complex to be performed in a spreadsheet and needs to be developed in a database with an appropriate coding language utilized to perform the calculations (i.e. Python or R etc.).
• Story Telling Guru – To take the output data and turn it into meaningful visual stories in Power BI or something similar.

The biggest tip we can provide here is to start with a rapid and simple model and with only two key source systems – Financial Management and Student Management data. Further complexity can then be driven by key stakeholders and users of the model, rather than by the project team.

The last post in this series (timeline) will provide guidance on how to achieve a full Academic Program Financial Management model with only 1-2 part time project personnel!

For more information on Academic Program Financial Management please click here.