OneFinance: February 2024 program lead update – 2023 year-end review

    February 14, 2024

    Our North Star

    To enable Yale’s mission, simplify and standardize financial services in order to make life easier where everyone has a role in building a strong culture of financial integrity, insight, and stewardship of Yale resources.

    Looking back – program accomplishments to date

    In our last program update, we shared an overview of the OneFinance strategic initiative’s key deliverables. As we begin the new year, we are proud of the accomplishments of the project teams in advancing our North Star and the progress that has been made in alignment with our key deliverables.

    Risk assessments of our financial processes have been underway to identify areas for future improvements. Assessments have been completed for eight financial processes (e.g., Source-to-Pay, Grant Revenue, etc.).

    Impact: These assessments have been used to inform the initiative’s work so that we can improve transparency, prevent future fraud, and improve the partnership between central and distributed finance functions to build an effective, connected, and unified OneFinance function.

    Policy and procedure enhancements have been a significant focus in addressing areas of opportunity identified in the risk assessments. We have enhanced policies and procedures to simplify and standardize Source-to-Pay, Financial Review Checklist, and Grant related processes, including:

    Impact: We have clarified, streamlined, and standardized processes to make life easier and addressed areas of opportunity identified in the risk assessments.

    Reporting and analytics work involves creating new or refining existing reports to allow departments to better analyze financial data.

    • The Find Spend Authorization / Cash Advance - Yale report was enhanced to allow users to identify the grant end dates associated with the open authorizations within one report. This will help ensure timely charging of related expenses and foster proactive monitoring of advances on grants. – June 2023

    Impact: Report enhancements reduce the time it takes for departments to analyze information and complete their financial processes.

    Compliance monitoring focuses on creating risk-sensing dashboards and other monitoring reports and tools that allow us to identify significant frauds, errors, or other irregularities in our financial information. The following tools have been implemented, including:

    • An oversight tool to detect split Purchase Orders (POs) – November 2022
    • Financial Compliance Dashboards deployed to the Financial Compliance team capturing three Source-to-Pay metrics (Discretionary Spend Trend Analysis, Count of Transactions below a threshold, and Top Vendor Spend) – August 2023
    • PO Management Dashboard in Workday developed and published to the community – October 2023

    Impact: Monitoring tools will help us detect potential fraud or irregularities, identify opportunities to further assist in the appropriate implementation of policies or completion of processes, and help the community track, monitor, and manage POs and spending.

    Financial training involves developing a comprehensive and cohesive financial training program to ensure a well-trained staff. Deliverables include:

    Impact: The community responsible for executing financial processes will have resources and training available to help them more easily and consistently adhere to best practices and policies. Training will help improve quality and reduce work and rework. The shift from live training to eLearning will save time and provide learners with easier, on-demand training access.

    Operating model work has begun that focuses on clarifying the financial roles and responsibilities of programmatic leaders (dean, director, chair, VP) and lead administrators (LA), including a better definition of the LA’s dual reporting lines and accountabilities.

    Impact: More clearly defined financial management responsibilities of programmatic leaders and LAs will result in a more consistent, connected, cohesive financial management structure across Yale.

    Stronger culture to ensure we evolve the culture through every aspect of the work and create a culture of transparency and partnership among all members of the Finance community, resulting in a more unified finance function campus-wide where everyone is enabled and responsible for being a good steward of the university’s assets, we have:

    • Re-affirmed and emphasized the North Star as the singular mission and objective of all OneFinance and Finance initiatives. – August 2023
    • Launched and engaged the OneFinance Think Tank, consisting of subject matter experts at all levels across the university directly involved in doing the financial process work, to provide us with the input and feedback we need to advance our work- February 2023 – Think Tank membership expanded to 87 subject matter experts – January 2024
    • Developed a robust change management strategy to inform the community of our activities and accomplishments. – December 2023
    • Enlisted lead administrators as change ambassadors for our work. – November 2023

    Impact: These efforts have resulted in the launch of the OneFinance initiative with the needed resources and structure to begin and accelerate the work. The Think Tank has provided valuable, experience-based insights (e.g., Policy 3201 split PO language, Integrated Source-to-Pay workflows, etc.). Our work emphasizes a continuous improvement mindset, promotes a culture of integrity, and strives to improve employee satisfaction.

    Looking ahead

    Look forward to more information on planned work for the remainder of FY24 and extending beyond to make continued progress toward our North Star:

    • Continuously review and assess our financial processes to identify opportunities for improvement.
    • Work begins on two valuable technology projects in Source-to-Pay, designing a comprehensive, technology-based Integrated Source-to-Pay platform and an AP Supplier Setup Software that will outsource the setup and onboarding of new suppliers.
    • A multi-year Financial Gateway project that will rethink and redesign the structure of our finance web pages so that information can more easily be available to users as needed.
    • Finance 101 training work will continue and be deployed to the community.
    • Report enhancements are underway for payroll analysis completed at the department level, supporting several FRC checklist steps.
    • Organizational model project work will continue to document and clarify financial management responsibilities and dual reporting relationships.
    • Financial compliance dashboard will be piloted in Yale School of Medicine. Development of a payroll dashboard is underway.
    • Think Tank membership will expand to include additional subject matter experts across campus to support our upcoming projects.
    • Ongoing change management activities to ensure continued awareness and support of the OneFinance strategic initiative at the program level and for individual projects.

    Finally, we will have a seamless leadership transition of the OneFinance program when Brian Rebeschi retires in March 2024 and Steve Gentile, senior director at the Yale School of Medicine, assumes co-leadership of the program with Lisa Varni, associate controller. The OneFinance strategic initiative sponsors, leads, and team members extend their gratitude to Brian for his leadership and contributions to this program over the past two years and his 36 years of service to the university. We wish him a wonderful retirement.

    Questions

    We encourage you to share this information with your department colleagues. To learn more:

    Thank you for your engagement and support.

    OneFinance program leads:

    Steve Gentile, senior director, YSM Finance & Administration for Integrated Business Operations
    Brian Rebeschi, executive director, F&A – YSM Business Operations
    Lisa Varni, associate controller, Internal Controls and Compliance