The University of Texas System
- Rachel Raymond
- Financial Reporting
- minute(s)What Starts Here Changes the World: An Incremental Approach to System Improvement Projects: Staff Augmentation, AFR Automation Organization: The University of Texas System, Founded in 1883 Number of Students: 256,000 Platform: Workiva At FHB, our client engagements are anything but transactional. We get to know our clients’ teams, their systems, and their challenges, forging long-term relationships that often span multiple projects and many years. Such is the case with The University of Texas System. The Beginning When we first spoke with UT System, they had been considering implementing Workiva for process improvement and automation for several years but were unable to get internal buy-in for the necessity of a new approach. Fortunately, Veronica Hinojosa Segura, NACD, D.C., the System’s Associate Vice Chancellor, began to get her team’s buy-in once FHB demonstrated the “art of the possible.” “When I came on to this role six years ago, I was surprised to find that we were a $45 billion net-position organization, still consolidating financial statements with Word and Excel,” said Veronica. “It took almost an army of people. Once we received information from the campuses, to even try to consolidate, there was a lot of copying and pasting. So, inefficiency was the biggest driver for [change]. And then selfishly, my goal was to become best in class out of all the university systems in the country,” she said. During that time, UT System lost several key finance team members, which led them to believe they would need to kill the process-improvement project altogether. They would have enough problems just completing year-end the old way, let alone taking on something new. “Around 120 years of institutional knowledge went out the door,” said Veronica. FHB agreed that this development would put the implementation at risk. Instead of letting the team get stuck in a catch-22 situation (needing new tools to become more efficient and require less staff time, while being unable to implement new tools because of needing more staff time), we pointed out that many clients hire FHB for staff augmentation, as we have a deep bench of CPAs with decades of experience working in the public sector, doing exactly the kind of work required of the UT team. That experience has given them first-hand knowledge of historic and upcoming pronouncements, including GASB 87, 94, and 96. We proposed that the UT System team start “phase one” of their improvement initiative by hiring FHB to support them through year-end and ensure their success. This engagement provided the added benefit of allowing us to learn their processes and challenges firsthand. Project One: Staff Augmentation In 2022, the UT System team was “stretched pretty thin,” said Jamie Frey, Director of Financial Innovation. At the outset of our engagement, they tasked the FHB team with consolidating variances in their Annual Financial Report (AFR); writing an explanation for the variances in the report’s management, discussion, and analysis (MD&A) section; and reviewing its footnotes. “The FHB team did a great job,” said Jamie. “They have the expertise…I particularly liked the organized way they communicated back to us. Jan (FHB Principal Consultant Jan Brewer, CPA, CGMA, MBA) was instrumental in that. There was a worksheet, with a summary tab, and then it went into detail. And it was very easy to review. It had stoplights indicating issues or things we needed to look at. It was very organized, so it allowed us to easily look at the overview and see what we needed to dig into,” she said. The success of the four-month Staff Augmentation project set the stage for future engagements between FHB and UT System. Project Two: AFR Automation Next, FHB undertook the project to help UT System streamline and improve their AFR preparation process, using reporting automation platform Workiva. The Team Throughout the AFR project, FHB’s expertise and experience shone through. The UT team was thrilled with the combination of accounting acumen and technical expertise demonstrated by our team. They were further impressed with our deep understanding of Workiva. Jamie also commended the project management leadership of FHB’s Kelsey Macke, PMP. “The team was very knowledgeable. The running of the meetings was very organized, the project plan was very organized and laid out. The FHB team pivoted when needed. In terms of running projects, they're very skilled,” she said. “You have an excellent team,” Jamie added. I want to thank everyone we worked with; it was a pleasure. So much talent, and the kind of talent that we needed on this project,” she said. “I was pleasantly surprised at the ease of automating the process,” said Veronica. Obviously, this was not FHB’s first rodeo; you had a template we could follow that made it so much easier for us. And Workiva is a very user-friendly tool. It looks and feels like Excel, something that my team was already used to,” she said. The Outcome In terms of the project’s outcome, UT anticipates significant time savings (particularly in the MD&A section of their AFR); improved collaboration; and mitigation of error. “For us, I think collaboration is probably number one,” said Jamie. “I love the commenting feature. I love how you can filter and see what's for you. I love that our auditors can go directly in there and make their comments and it's going to be the latest version. We can respond directly and they can see the edits directly,” she said. “We probably cut about three and a half to four weeks of time [out of the AFR process], which came just in time, since the Comptroller's office has shortened our deadline,” said Veronica. The UT System team is also happy to have established a repeatable, formalized business process that will help potential new hires and users get up to speed more quickly. And last, but not least, the UT Team was thrilled with the Capstone Training provided by FHB at the project’s completion. The Capstone package includes one video that walks through UT System’s specific AFR process steps, and another video providing answers to their remaining questions. “The Capstone video was excellent. I think you'll continue to hear that from your clients. That’s a great resource and we appreciate y'all doing that so much,” said Jamie. At the close of the AFR project, the UT team felt well-positioned for the future. “We’re already seeing, as we roll this forward, some things that we can implement in the future to continue to make improvements. We’re so excited to see where this goes,” said Jamie. “I absolutely think we're on the right track. This was a change that we needed,” said Jamie.
With the assistance of FHB's experts, The University of Texas System met their pressing deadlines and cut three to four weeks from their AFR preparation process.
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City of Iqaluit keeps calm and carries on
- Jamie Black
- Success Stories
- minute(s)The City of Iqaluit is the capital of the Canadian Territory of Nunavut and is an ecological wonderland. Famed for an abundance of natural landscapes and wildlife, it attracts visitors from around the globe. The Challenge Located on beautiful Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic with a population of just 7,740 (2016 census), the City's finance department has experienced some difficulty attracting qualified staff due to a remote location, housing shortage, high cost of living, and limited infrastructure to facilitate travel. When the City required urgent Payroll support, CAO Amy Elgersma was certain that employing an experienced, qualified Payroll Administrator could not happen before the next payroll run. Elgersma needed a quick, temporary solution so the organization's 150 employees would continue to be paid on time. With time of the essence, the City turned to F.H. Black & Company Incorporated to fill the gap until a suitable replacement could be on-boarded. She knew of FHB from a presentation they provided at a recent conference, and the work they had done with the Government of Nunavut previously. The Response After a few brief conversations, FHB assigned several members of their team to support the City: Michael Switzer, CPA, CA, was formerly the Town of Collingwood’s Deputy Treasurer with responsibilities including preparation of both the year-end financial statements and the annual Town budget as well as managing the town's receivables, payables, and payroll. Joy Richardson, CPA, was formerly the Chief Financial Officer of Thomasville, Georgia where her primary responsibilities included managing both the budget and year-end financial reporting processes as well as overseeing receivables, payables, payroll and all the other day to day activities of the finance department. Tina Steliga rounded out the team. Utilizing 16 years of experience managing the receivables, payables, and payroll processes for numerous clients of all sizes. Michael, Joy & Tina's decades of experience working in government finance made them an ideal addition to immediately and completely meet the City's needs. Within a week of the request, consultants Michael & Joy were onsite working with the team to transfer responsibilities and document processes. They were followed shortly thereafter by Tina, who assisted in administering payroll onsite before commencing remote support. FHB’s response time was exceptional. Their CPA's had the knowledge, skills, and experience needed to learn, document, and process the payroll system efficiently. They also had excellent interpersonal skills and were able to understand processes quickly. Once FHB was on board and started working with us, we were confident that payroll would be completed by the deadline. Disaster Averted The first step in the project was developing complete process documentation. Extensive interviews with City staff allowed FHB to build extremely detailed process documentation. The decision was made to put the documentation into a project management software to allow for the ongoing assignment of tasks and monitoring of the process by both FHB management and the City. This ensured FHB would not miss any steps and resulted in the proper execution of payroll each and every time. As the City's search for a Payroll Administrator was underway, FHB continued to process the payroll remotely. From mid-October to the end of February. We were able to arrange to have the payroll done via distance, this saved us time and money. The entire process was documented using a project management software tool. Ultimately the City successfully recruited a Payroll Administrator to take on the role. FHB transitioned to provide assistance getting the new Payroll Administrator up to speed and support them through the first few payroll runs. I would absolutely recommend FHB to other finance departments. They were able to process payroll with very little notice and continued via distance. They had a strong knowledge of the payroll and finance systems and could adapt to our processes easily.
The City of Iqaluit required urgent support to keep its payroll on track. They turned to FHB's team of experienced CPAs for assistance.
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