Empowering Efficiency, Transparency and Insights Across the University

UNC-Chapel Hill, the nation’s first public university, is a global higher education leader. Carolina has a commitment to ensuring that every student who earns admission can come to Carolina and thrive. UNC is nationally recognized for teaching, groundbreaking research and dedication to public service.

“I'm proud that we were able to implement a process that the campus embraced, understood why we did it and how it made their jobs and ours easier.”

- Sheri Olson, Director Finance Data Analytics & Reporting

1. Enabling an Easier Approach to Budgeting and Reporting.

Faced with a mandate to shift to an all-funds budget, UNC-Chapel Hill needed a new approach to budgeting and reporting. Implementing OneStream allowed the university to replace manual and time-consuming processes with a unified platform. Significant gains in efficiency, transparency and accountability quickly followed across the campus.

By leveraging a single platform, the university also gained new spending insights, improved planning accuracy and implemented policies to optimize university key performance indicators (KPIs) and use of funds.

Transforming Manual Processes

When the Board of Governors mandated each North Carolina campus to provide all-funds budget, UNC-Chapel Hill had to establish a way to gather budget information for the entire university. The university lacked the necessary data or processes to prepare a comprehensive all-funds budget. UNC-Chapel Hill initially used Excel templates to gather information. Subsequently, UNC manually performed data consolidation and adjustments in an Excel workbook, resulting in the final approved budget for the year.

The Excel-based process was time-consuming and lacked transparency, trust and accountability. Accordingly, units across the campus had no clear understanding of how approved budget numbers were derived. To improve, UNC-Chapel Hill sought a solution to automate the budget process, enhance visibility and provide better insights for the entire university.

“I now have more free time, because it doesn't take me near as long to find that meaning behind the numbers.”

—Sheri Olson, Director Finance Data Analytics & Reporting

2. Improving Efficiency, Transparency and Trust.

The University selected OneStream because its vast capabilities go beyond just budgeting to offer long-term support. By implementing OneStream, Chapel Hill gained significant value across the university:

Efficiency: Substantially reduced the time to collect budget information, make adjustments and perform variance analysis.

Visibility: Gained new insights into budget performance, enabling users to understand budget formulation and track spending year-round.

Accuracy and Accountability: Enabled more accurate monthly planning and enforced better spend practices.

Overall, OneStream’s familiar Excel-like interface meant a smooth, easy transition. Users appreciated the ability to drill down into the details and understand why changes were made to get to the approved budget. Being able to roll up accounts and funds also lets users see all funding sources budgeted.

Gaining New Insights and Improved Financial Management

• Enabled more informed decision-making for better funding, enrollment and other critical planning items.
• Reduced budget development time from 3 weeks to a few days.
• Created a consistent budget consolidation process across 52 units.
• Facilitated new, real-time insights on budget performance throughout the year.
• Provided accurate and timely monthly reporting for management to understand current position and better predict the future.

With the new reporting and insights, UNC-Chapel Hill can implement financial policy adjustments throughout the year, improving KPIs and optimizing the use of remaining funds.

3. Continuing to Expand and Enhance Finance Processes.

With a solid foundation in place, UNC-Chapel Hill looks forward to expanding the use of OneStream to enhance additional Finance processes and support unique unit needs. Commitment tracking, position planning and capital planning are just a few of those processes. For UNC-Chapel, OneStream was the right fit. OneStream can scale over time and grow with UNC’s needs – empowering the university to continuously improve financial management and student success.

“Everybody got something great in the end that we didn't have before. And it was a great building block for the future and what we want to do.”

—Sheri Olson, Director Finance Data Analytics & Reporting