Shorter budget cycle yields dividends for university

29/09/2009

UNISA, South Africa’s largest university and one of the largest distance education institutions in the world, has slashed its budgeting cycle from six months to eight weeks since implementing specialist budgeting and reporting software idu-Concept.

Budgets and Management Accounting Director Willem du Plessis says the new budget process has also contributed towards the university’s substantially improved financial position. UNISA’s Chairman of Council Dr Matthews Phosa was quoted in a recent statement as saying that the university’s financial position “has improved considerably over the past few years” and that this “showed evidence of sound financial management and control by the university’s management.”

“idu-Concept is so easy to use that people are now much more financially aware,” comments du Plessis. “It’s also made it possible to evaluate all our managers on their budget management, which has become much tighter.”

“We used to start our budget process in April and it would finally be approved by the University’s Council in September each year,” adds du Plessis. “It was all spreadsheet-based, which with 160 cost centres made for an enormous amount of frustration and duplicated effort.”

The situation was complicated by the fact that UNISA merged with Technikon South Africa and the distance learning division of Vista University in 2004, taking total staff numbers from 3,500 to 4,500 and introducing multiple different budgeting systems and processes.

As du Plessis and his colleagues began to incorporate budgeting into the university’s long-term strategic plan, they sought a web-based budgeting solution and considered several vendors. “I travelled to Cape Town to check out idu-Concept’s references from two major financial services companies and was impressed after I saw the system in action. idu-Concept emerged as the best bet for our environment and situation.”

UNISA began implementing idu-Concept in 2005, just as its normal budget cycle began – and successfully completed its budget for that year despite the inevitable disruptions of a new system. Since then, budgets have been reliably completed in eight weeks.

“This year we launched our budget process on June 25 and I closed it on the afternoon of July 14,” says du Plessis. “We’ll have a budget meeting at the end of July and from there it goes to Council for formal approval. The whole process takes eight weeks, but we get all the actual submissions completed in three.” du Plessis says he recently learned that global best practice is to complete budgets in seven to eight weeks: “That’s where we are. I’ve reached my goal: if we are in tune with industry then I’m happy. It’s even more impressive if you consider that we are an academic institution, not a business, and not all academic heads of department enjoy dealing with finances.”

About idu Software
IDU simplifies financial management for non-financial managers. Its flagship product, idu-Concept, provides easy, effective budgeting and financial reporting for medium-sized to large businesses, including many of South Africa's top firms. idu-Concept integrates easily with ERP software, but unlike more cumbersome offerings, idu-Concept can be implemented quickly, requires little or no ongoing consulting fees and reduces budgeting cycles from months to weeks. For more information visit www.idu.co.za.

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