Tandem respectfully acknowledges the traditional custodians of the land on which we live and work, the Wathaurung, Bunurong Boon Wurrung and Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung peoples of the eastern Kulin nation and pay respect to their elders past, present and emerging.
How can we improve the quality of our financial reporting to the school board?
In a nutshell
The client: A regional Victorian P-12 school
The challenge: Reduce the complexity and complication in our finance reports that’s killing our committee and board meetings.
Lenses used:
- Data science
- Complexity science
- Strategy
Our response: We used data science to move finance reporting from excel spreadsheets to Microsoft PowerBI.
The impact: We reduced the time it took to develop financial reports from 3 weeks to under an hour.
Case Study
The challenge
Finance and risk committee meetings were a problem. Financial reports were a dump of everything in synergetic with little strategic thought applied to what the committee received. Members with a financial background crawled through every line of the P&L. Members without finance experience were confused.
The Principal was fielding difficult questions that they couldn’t answer on the spot. There were inconsistencies in the information that was reported. Everything felt messy and overly complicated. The big picture was completely lost.
The committee was losing confidence in the school’s financial management processes. Meetings were mired in operational matters.
We were engaged to redesign the finance reports the board received. Our task was to reduce complexity and complication and get the meetings back on track.
Our response
We used complexity science to understand how things were getting so off track. We figured out where the breakdown in process was and where human rules, behaviours and constraints were making problems worse.
Once we had a clear picture of how everything worked together to produce the current situation, we started to redesign it. We used our experience in strategy and working with boards to determine the key drivers of financial performance at the school and how this aligned to the strategic plan.
We then used data science to move finance reporting from excel spreadsheets to Microsoft PowerBI. The new report was condensed to five, simple dashboard style pages. The pages demonstrated the school’s financial performance, financial position, and the performance of the underlying drivers of success.
The change
We reduced the time it took to develop financial reports from 3 weeks to under an hour. Our work instantly lifted the gaze of the board from the operational to the strategic. Finally, by reducing complexity and complication, the big picture was revealed.
Through our new automated finance report, we increased the quality of committee meetings via reframed discussions around the strategic issues. The reduced complexity resulted in an improved the relationship between the board and the school executive.
Because the new system was automatic, we reduced the need for human intervention and reduced errors. This increased the board’s confidence in the school’s financial management processes.