Many higher education institutions rely on manual financial operations due to budget restraints or staffing limitations. But when financial processes are still using spreadsheets, manual reconciliations, and disconnected platforms, institutions put themselves at risk of facing myriad problems. Although legacy processes may feel comfortable or familiar, they can invite underestimated consequences.
Manual operations may seem manageable for institutions, but the truth is that they introduce a range of hidden issues that can impact day-to-day operations and long-term institutional health. To remain sustainable, institutions must modernize and automate financial processes. These demands are pressuring chief financial officers (CFOs) to take on more strategic roles in how they transform the business office.
To modernize, CFOs must first understand why the status quo is no longer feasible.
What's Wrong With Business as Usual?
Higher education is facing a dilemma: Institutions are being asked to do more with less, despite staffing shortages. As a result, manual processes are not only inefficient for teams already stretched thin, but they can also introduce substantial risk.
So, what’s wrong with traditional, manual financial processes? They are repetitive, they are risky, they create bottlenecks, and they lack transparency.
- Time Wasted on Repetition: Higher education finance teams often spend hours on redundant, repetitive tasks like entering data, consolidating spreadsheets, and reconciling discrepancies across systems. In a market where talent is hard to recruit and retain, institutions could benefit from using this time to improve financial analyses, budget forecasting, and strategic support.
- Increased Risk of Human Error: Human error is natural, even for the most meticulous team. But those issues compound when institutions are forced into manual operations. Even the smallest of mistakes like a formula error or using an outdated file can cause huge problems like inaccurate reports, compliance issues, or deteriorated trust with leadership.
- More Inefficiencies and Bottlenecks: When processes depend on individuals over systems, workflows can slow down, leading to impaired collaboration between teams and greater inefficiencies. The slowdowns from these bottlenecks may even force finance teams to operate reactively instead of proactively, compounding errors with reporting and insights even more.
- No Real-Time Visibility: Data changes fast. If institutions are stuck dealing with manual operations, any insights gathered can quickly become outdated. If CFOs have to make timely decisions based on stale indicators, those choices can have costly consequences, especially in today’s higher education environment with rapidly changing funding pressures and enrollment shifts.
Automation Enables Modernization
Institutions may be struggling in today’s time of change. Students and constituents want information and resources faster, forcing colleges and universities to keep up or put themselves at risk. While modernization and agility stem from many departments, CFOs have their own role to play in meeting these needs—their reporting insights can guide strategic decisions that can make or break an institution.
By eliminating manual operations and automating processes, finance teams can work faster, have greater insight into real-time happenings, and enable greater efficiencies across campus.
- Streamlined Workflows: Replace tedious, manual tasks with strategic automations. For example, institutions can enable automatic purchase order approvals or create integrations that automatically update budget changes in real time. Institutions can set up notifications for key stakeholders to be alerted via email, text, or their preferred channel, keeping everyone in the loop or nudging individuals who need to act.
- Built-In Controls: Automation can strengthen compliance through standardized processes, fewer deviations, direct oversight, and clear audit trails. This means institutions can minimize their reliance on individual knowledge and reduce the risk of human error.
- Shared Data: If teams aren’t working on the same data, inaccuracies abound. With an integrated system, information is automatically updated between connected solutions, allowing everyone to use the most accurate, up-to-date data. These systems can eliminate silos, reduce duplications, and enable CFOs to access data usually housed within separate student, HR, or financial aid systems, for example, allowing them to better analyze performance and determine profits or losses associated with programs.
- Real-Time Reporting: Dashboards and embedded analytics provide up-to-date insights, enabling faster, more confident decisions. With access to real-time, automatically updated information, business offices can be more proactive and advocate for change instead of having to react to problems.
CFOs: Automation Is an Opportunity for Strategic Action
Eliminating manual financial operations is not only about efficiency; by enabling more automated, modernized processes, the finance office can be elevated from a back-office function to a driver of change. The team can play an active role in providing insights that guide strategic direction across the board—not just in finance decisions.
When manual financial management tasks are replaced with automated processes, business offices can:
- Provide more accurate, up-to-date financial and strategic insights.
- Collaborate more effectively with teams and functions across campus.
- Empower enrollment, retention, and student success strategies.
- Support and guide long-term institutional planning.
Leveraging a modern, cloud-based ERP platform can make this transformation possible. These systems integrate financial management platforms with student and operational systems to eliminate disconnected processes and improve data accuracy, accessibility, and visibility. When CFOs and the business office have access to this type of system, they can reduce their dependency on manual tasks and enable more resilient processes.
