Kelly Epting 0:00:11.4:
Kelly Epting from the University of South Carolina. I'm in the budget office.
Bryan Elmore 0:00:17.1:
I'm Bryan Elmore. I am the AVP for budgets and business operations at Auburn University. I tell people, 'The last part of that, I'm still trying to figure out what that actually means!' I do have a couple of auxiliary units that report to me, but the major focus of my time and effort is budget, specifically long-term planning. A little bit about Auburn: we are a large, public land-grant, sea-grant, space-grant institution, located in East Alabama. Some of you may not have known where Auburn was! Somebody asked me earlier, 'Is this Auburn, Georgia? Is this Auburn, Maine? New York?' I think there's a California. No, good old Auburn, Alabama. We are a football school with an academic component, a little bit. Well, that's debatable right now, if we're a football school or not. We're probably more of a basketball school now. We're going to call ourselves Kentucky. That's what we'll say we are. Auburn: the student population, just this year, went over 34,000.
Bryan Elmore 0:01:30.3:
We have seen significant growth over the last five or six years. It's happened organically. Not a strategy, per se: just happened. Our budget is a little bit less than $1.9 billion. As the land grant, we do have the Cooperative Extension System and the Alabama Agricultural Experiment Station, as a part of that. So, they're included in that. As well as, we do have a separately accredited institution in Montgomery, which is Auburn Montgomery. Just a little bit about Auburn and my role there. I've been there for, last week was 19 years, so I'm ready to get out the door pretty soon! Yes, 25, I'm gone. No, I've got to get my daughter through school first. That's the only thing keeping me there. No, I'm just kidding.
Justin Martin 0:02:26.4:
Before you pass the mic, I've heard you mention the space grant thing a few times, and I'm dying to ask more about that. Can you share a little more?
Bryan Elmore 0:02:35.2:
Yes, I have no clue what that means. Auburn is known, a little bit, for its aerospace engineering program. I think maybe Purdue, or the Ohio State one has probably taken over. At one point, Auburn had the most astronauts that have ever been in outer space. We do have a significant presence now, in probably one of the fastest-growing cities in the United States: in Huntsville, Alabama. We have a presence there. There's a lot of government contracting and research opportunities there. So, we're able to tap into a lot of that.
Justin Martin 0:03:22.5:
Thank you.
Bill Guerrero 0:03:25.1:
I'm in a very, very good mood, just because my UConn Huskies won yesterday. Two-time NCAA champ: repeat. We were really struggling, so we needed a win last night. What I'm hearing, with my partner over here, that they're a football school. They're the number one team in the country: Auburn basketball.
Bryan Elmore 0:03:48.8:
Two.
Bill Guerrero 0:03:49.8:
Number two?
Bryan Elmore 0:03:51.2:
[Unclear words 0:03:51.1], we might not be.
Bill Guerrero 0:03:52.1:
Well, yes, but Auburn's big-time, big-time. So, he's downplaying it significantly. We all know who Auburn is. My little school is University of Bridgeport. I did a quick intro in one of the first sessions. In Connecticut; 4000 students, roughly. Why I'm happy to be part of this panel is, we're talking about the connected journey. I think this is going to be really, really relevant to multiple multi-campuses, and much larger universities out here. I'm looking forward to this conversation, and appreciate the acknowledgement of the uniform change. I was hoping that someone was going to remedy the sock situation, but it has not happened.
Justin Martin 0:04:43.2:
Alan is your guy, right there.
Audience 0:04:45.2:
I could catch.
Justin Martin 0:04:49.5:
Thank you. I'm going to pick up right where you left off there, Bill, in terms of connected planning. That, I would argue, can be a lot of different things to a lot of different people, in terms of how they think about that. Within the context of Anaplan, it's something we talk about, both as a partner and with our friends at Anaplan, often, in terms of the importance of that. I'd love to hear each of your perspectives on what that phrase, 'connected planning', really translates to, in terms of how you think about what you're doing within Anaplan.
Kelly Epting 0:05:26.0:
Connectedness would definitely be my goal, which is, not just having the one department which is pushing out the planning, but also having other units being able to leverage the planning we have developed. They contribute their own numbers, their own information. Then, that will end up providing much better decision-making.
Bryan Elmore 0:05:49.3:
For us, and I think this is a problem that is pervasive in higher ed, is that there's too much the left hand not knowing what the right hand is doing. We're no different. I think we've broken down some walls, in order to bring some of our key functional areas into the platform, to really help improve our decision-making. Everyone can sit and do their own functional planning about how many students we're going to have. We can figure out how many buildings we're going to build, or how much deferred maintenance we're going to tackle in a particular year. If it's not part of an overall financial strategy, it's all for naught. That's what I see it as: it's holding hands together and singing Kumbaya, really. Trying to focus on moving the institution forward and not thinking about, well, this is my data. I'm going to protect it. I don't want it to be a part of your system, because you're going to do something nefarious with it. That's never the case: we're all about trying to improve business operations on campus.
Bill Guerrero 0:07:13.4:
I love the internal perspective. Certainly, as you're building your budgets and making sure your campus is connected on that aspect, and having access to the information. My approach, how I'm looking at it, from a small, private institution, is when you're reading what's happening in the industry and so forth, especially with the private schools: there are closures; there are mergers; there are acquisitions; there's whatever you want to call it, strategic partnerships. I'm looking at that as, how do I roll up financials, when these organizations have multiple entities that roll up into a holding company? There are a lot of colleges and universities out there like that. When I was hearing about the veterinarian school, thinking, that'd be awesome, if all the other units at VA Tech used Anaplan; it'd be great. That's a great example of 'needed for connection', so that internal perspective. Then, when you were saying, which blew me away, when you're mentioning Maryland. I was like, 'What? That's some serious financial connection of the data.' So, that is fascinating to me.
Bill Guerrero 0:08:40.9:
Then, when I think about my particular institution, and all the other ones I'm aware of, which are out there, which are secret or public to some degree, there are so many colleges and universities out there that are looking for a strategic partner to stay alive. How are you going to connect those financials? So, I'm really looking forward to that part of the journey. The problem is, everyone has different ERPs. Not only do we have different software between our departments and units, now try buying another university, or merging with another university. They have Oracle and you have Ellucian. Their chart of accounts is one way, and yours is another way. You're like, 'That's not how we do it,' and trying to get consolidated financial. So I'm looking forward to that.
Justin Martin 0:09:29.1:
I think there are a lot of other really interesting examples in the room. Susan, you were talking about the different campuses within the Colorado system. When we think about the vet med between those two different schools and that partnership, when we think about our RCM allocations and distributing those values out to the different campuses across the state. As a follow-up to that, any thought on, gosh, wouldn't it be nice if we connected this a little bit more, and had the left hand speaking to the right hand, just a little bit more, in terms of what you're already doing? You had previously mentioned a little bit around the HR process, and your HCM data. Any other examples?
Kelly Epting 0:10:19.5:
I would say that, in terms of how to improve it, I definitely think that we're building systems, but we've got to continue to develop some kind of an iterative education around these systems. To help develop a trust across these different silos, even though the walls are breaking down. I do believe there have been some improvements. I think that it's not something that is going to be resolved instantly, because we have got this new system that everybody is using. We have definitely got to continue to speak with one another. For us to have more time to actually analyze this data, and analyzing it together. What we're doing right now is, we do have a lot of efficiencies now with Anaplan. So we're able to produce the items. We're able to spend more time analyzing, as opposed to building. We're still having to reach over and make phone calls and say, 'Would you please send me that report on your data again, so that we can pull it in and make a cohesive argument for our next strategic decision?'
Bryan Elmore 0:11:31.4:
For us, there are two key ones I would love to bring into the platform. We are utilizing, for all of our budget and reporting on campus, Anaplan, with the exception of our athletic department. They utilize another platform. We are engaging, trying to make that happen, because it's a manual process. When they provide us their budget on an annual basis, we've got to manually put it into the platform or our budget document, in order to build out and finalize our document. That's one area where I see some significant opportunity. We have made some headway. We're in a pause right now, for a couple of reasons. The other area, I feel like there's a huge opportunity for us with academic-related data. I think, in the last session, it was mentioned about academic program margin and things of that nature. We feel like we could build that out. Again, it's about ownership of data. I have a really good relationship with our director of institutional research. He understands what we're trying to do. He understands the business case that we're trying to make. Generally, he would be forthcoming with that data, but he's not the technical owner of that data. So, it's those walls again, breaking down those walls, in order to bring that data in, which will bring it all into the platform, and help us make better decisions.
Bill Guerrero 0:13:37.0:
I'm trying to think of where my frame is; I'm trying to frame the question in my headspace. It was a crazy busy morning I had: my accreditation financial reports needed to be submitted this morning. I had my audit committee meeting. In our audit meeting today, it was presenting your 2023, '24 audits, meaning ending June 30th '24. Most people don't realize. You guys in the room know this stuff: people are like, 'Really? You're still working on last year's financials, to make sure they're legit and they're clean, and all of that kind of stuff.' So, we're going through this meeting this morning. The financial reports I'm managing and working through, if I go to the last three different pages, it's called 'supplemental information', that a lot of you guys know. It has all the financials for all the related entities. So, think about seven different universities rolling up into one university, or one holding company. You have financials, all of that. The amount of labor that goes into it. Not just chart of accounts: terminology, let alone, it's unbelievable, the challenges. One of these entities doesn't have - we talked a lot about auxiliary revenue in one of the priors. They don't even have auxiliary. They don't have housing. They have no idea how to consolidate that revenue into these consolidated financials. It's always bucketed in the wrong area. I always have to explain that variance: 'No, that's not that.' It's really challenging.
Bill Guerrero 0:15:35.7:
So, when I think about what I went through today, and where we're hoping to go in the future. Certainly, in my journey of using Anaplan and so forth, that's one of our initial pieces we're going to be doing, is just monthly reporting. Is it really going to clear up a lot of things? At least, it's going to make less work for my team and reporting financials. If any of you guys were in B&I before you were in higher ed, and you worked for a massive corporation out there, they would have multiple entities all across the globe, and stuff like that. You have intercompany accounting, and eliminations, and all of that kind of stuff. That is what's going to be happening in higher ed more and more. That's the kind of stuff that I think is going to be cool, is you're going to be dealing with that and managing that, in an effective way, on this journey. I think Anaplan is built for that, and having a great partner is built for that.
Justin Martin 0:16:36.4:
I'm going to piggyback on a little bit of what you mentioned, Bryan. In particular, touching on the program sustainability. Tomeka had asked that question earlier, and I promised we'd come back to it. Now's a good time for it. For anyone in the room who isn't really familiar with that term or concept, when we think about looking at our chemistry department, or our biology department, or our English department, whatever it may be, whether it's from a margin, or dare anyone say profitability perspective, understanding how each of those departments is trending over time. Are they making decisions that are getting them in the black or less in the red? What can we learn from those departments that are doing well? Can we translate to some of the departments that are not as financially sustainable or viable? With that, as anyone in higher ed knows, that is a political minefield. The pitchforks come out very quickly. We're talking about tenured faculty, which is the biggest 'do not touch' area on any campus. I'm just curious, from each of your perspectives, is that a conversation that's happening? A conversation you know needs to happen? A conversation you don't even want to think about? Where do you fit on that spectrum?
Kelly Epting 0:18:06.1:
We have a relatively new provost. She came about the same time our president did, and she's been there for a couple of years now. She says she's data-driven. So, we are going down the road of coming up, it's a bolt-on to an existing - we've already talked about my experience with Helio. She wants to look at that. So, she's already receiving a lot of pushback. The president is already saying, 'Don't give people tenure unless they can produce.' Then, the deans are around the room saying, 'Well, that's a Chair decision.' Can we, 'Their hire letter said that they didn't have to teach, [?but a one-on-one 0:18:56.8].' So, that is one of those, 'But yet, they're not doing any research any more.' That's one of those things that keeps us up at night. So, we're saying the things we're supposed to say. The people in leadership are taking those steps. In terms of the real execution, we're not quite there yet.
Bryan Elmore 0:19:21.1:
To answer your second question first: Should we have the conversations? Absolutely. We need to be having those conversations. Everything, to me, is not really a dollars-and-cents decision. Whether we want to think of it as that or not, higher ed is a business. If you have programs that are costing you a lot more than they're bringing in, you at least have to have those conversations. I know that we've stopped some degree programs, but it really didn't close down whole departments. The last one that I remember was probably six to eight years ago. It was our polymer and fiber engineering. I think the program was predicated on the fact that East Alabama was very, very big in the textile industry, at one point in time. So, we needed people to be able to work, or lead, in those mills. Now, all of those mills are gone in our area. They've all been outsourced to foreign countries, or elsewhere in the United States. In terms of whether or not we're having those conversations, I can't say that we aren't; I can't say that we are, either. I think a lot of it has to occur behind closed doors, because of the political ramifications of that. Our faculty senate is somewhat vocal. They're a couple of knuckleheads who are constantly stirring things up.
Justin Martin 0:21:30.0:
This is recorded!
Bryan Elmore 0:21:31.5:
That's fine. I don't think they'll ever read it, or see it. We do have some folks that would be up in arms, in a situation like that. Yes, tenure is a sacred thing. The loss of that, for some, I think it would cause panic in others, to think, well, if they can do that to that department, they can certainly do it to me, too. I think that, as we embark on a new strategic plan, which is live now, it's roughly a decade-long strategic plan, we know we have some big infrastructure needs around research administration. Some of that is equipment; some of it is people. The only way we're going to be able to do that, without significantly changing tuition, is through reallocation of resources. Some people don't like that: 'You're taking my money?' 'Well, no. It's the university's money. It's not your money.'
Bill Guerrero 0:22:46.4:
Great question. To segue is, first of all, as a UConn alum, when you talked about tenure, they just talked about academic program review. They did some of that at University of Connecticut. If you just pull up the headlines in the last four weeks, absolute flamethrowers.
Kelly Epting 0:23:11.6:
Bloodbath.
Bill Guerrero 0:23:12.7:
Bloodbath. So people are like, 'Oh, no! We were just saying, we need to really look. Your job is okay right now.' Even as well as the athletics are, the deficits are enormous. To hear these two major R1 universities are talking about the need to do that, then my small school - again, I'm a $110 million school, versus these monsters to my right, but they're having the same conversations, in one version or not. The scary thing is, my school, we don't even have tenure. We don't have tenure, so you would think that the flexibility exists, to not only go through academic program development, as opposed to just academic program review, because I'm all about entrepreneurship. I'm all about, start brand-new academic programs that support the workforce, or your local employers, like you were talking. I'm all about that.
Bill Guerrero 0:24:16.2:
The hard argument of what you're alluding to is the concept of right-sizing. Not even cutting, just right-sizing. I go, 'We're a 4000-student school. If we add this brand-new program.' We all have the same new programs, though. If it's something in health sciences, or if it's data analytics, or if it's cybersecurity, we all have the same actual new programs. I'm like, 'All right, that's awesome. Is that going to bring 50, 100 students?' Guess what, that doesn't make us 4100 students. That keeps us at 4000 or whatever it is. So, you need to right-size those faculty resources, and so forth. I think, this issue of academic program review, and that negative connotation which is definitely existing, is the death of higher ed. As recorded or not, that is actually the death of higher ed, because no one wants to do that, because they're trying to keep people's jobs. We can't: the schools can't afford it. The population of students on most of our campuses, let's say outside of you guys or whatever, across the entire country, there are fewer students; fewer students in the future. Maybe they're all coming to the South to go to school, and that's okay.
Bill Guerrero 0:25:43.1:
All these private universities that are out there, it is scary. If they don't do academic program review, then it's going to be too late, and you can't recover. You can't recover with classes which have two students in it, and a faculty member making $100,000. It just doesn't work. People are very, very afraid to go through this. It's going to be too late. All those harbingers, all the different other things that are out there, it's happening. One of my calls, I just left between the two sessions was, I'm on the Educause Leadership Academy for aspiring CIOs. I'm doing it, as the CFO and my counterparts are. So, it's me and my small school, Ohio State and Tennessee. I'm like, 'Why am I always that small little stepchild on the side?' It gives the private school perspective, that it's scary out there. Part of it is to teach aspiring CIOs, or CIOs, 'How are you going to manage this, because I'm going to need the data. I'm going to need the data to do the academic program review, because those faculty members aren't going to agree or believe you.' When you say, 'You only have ten students in your program.' They're like, 'Prove it.' I wasn't part of the process to prove it. So, anyway, hot topic.
Bryan Elmore 0:27:07.3:
I'd like to follow up. You talk about right-sizing. I think that is something I feel like we need to be doing. It's right-sizing our people, not necessarily on the faculty side, but in other areas. We're part of a benchmarking platform which allows us to compare against peers which are like us. One of the things we see is that, in the nomenclature that is used, there are sub-activities that show a significant overinvestment. This sub-activity is departmental support. That's the admins in the departments. We've got to make some changes. We want to make changes from a position of strength, not from one of weakness. You talk about closures. There was a small, private liberal arts school in Birmingham: Birmingham Southern. A very, very political fight, because they have a lot of people connected in the state legislature, but they've closed. They made some poor financial decisions; don't get me wrong. When you're hemorrhaging students, you've got to re-envision what you are for the future. That's something I don't think we do enough of. We're not in fear of going under tomorrow. I always tell people, 'If I'm worried about today, the university is lost. I need to be worried about tomorrow, the day after that, the day after that. Today is here. It's over and done with. I can't do anything about it. I can do something about the future. If we don't make the tough decisions, we're going to be in a position where we have to make decisions that we don't want to make.'
Justin Martin 0:29:17.5:
There's always a way to reframe this as a unique opportunity, in terms of being creative, to try and solve this problem. I think the three of you are great examples of that, and many in this room, who are trying to think of different things. This program sustainability is, I think, one of a few different ways to go about that. Again, the pitchforks certainly come out. One example I'm thinking of is, I've done some work with some institutions in Ontario. They're part of a network of, I think it's fourteen different public institutions there. They reevaluate every single year: how many of them are teaching chemistry? How many of them have a physics degree? All fourteen don't need to. They're competing for the same students in high school who are interested in physics. Why are we making them pick one of fourteen? Why are we making the fourteen compete against each other, as opposed to, 'Let's all pivot together and really figure out a way to have two or three choices, and the others can do other things, and focus in other areas.'
Justin Martin 0:30:20.8:
I think, again, an opportunity to be very creative with how we approach that. Bill, you mentioned Educause. I'm going to pick up on that, too. Each of you, in your own rights, whether it's OACUBO, EACUBO or NACUBO, are all very, very active in each of those. I'm curious, when you think about those annual meetings or those workshops, and we talked about peers, as well: what we can learn from them, and even being creative with how we approach the vision of our futures. Are there certain topics or ideas out there that you get excited about when you hop on the plane to go to the next ACUBO conference, that you think you can really learn something from? Peer institutions, larger, smaller institutions, really hearing what they're doing to address challenges?
Kelly Epting 0:31:12.2:
I get excited about, of course, coming and seeing the comparative budget tools that we all have here. I never do tire of that. Again, sometimes, I don't know I need something until I actually see it. A bit like going to Target! Then, also, it's always topical. We are still concerned about enrollment, even though folks are coming from up north. They're maybe not going to always come from up north. Costs continue to rise. Like a lot of folks, we have not been able to increase our tuition. Even though we are growing, we need to understand that we're not - sustainability, efficiency, is always something that we're interested in. Name, image and likeness: the House case, all of that. We have been turned upside down with the portal, all of that. We are a big draw. The reason why people are coming, a lot of times, is for those SEC sports. If we've only got so much money in our ecosystem, and all of a sudden now, we've got to distribute it among all these other different components, it's a huge concern. I think that we're all in the same boat; we're all learning together. If anybody has got some really cool ideas, I want to be there to hear it.
Bryan Elmore 0:32:35.2:
I think Kelly and I are privileged: Kelly as the Chair, me as the Co-chair, of the Professional Development Committee for SACUBO, get to see all of the proposals that come in. It is a wide array of things. I will tell you, more recently, what we've seen a lot of, and it's an area where I have a significant focus on in the future, is how do we recruit and retain employees of this new generation? I think that's the challenge that we have. I tell people this all the time: I'm old-school when it comes to work. I really prefer to be in the office, more often than not. I like the flexibility to be able to work from home if I want to. I don't do it that often: maybe once a month. That's a lot of what's on this generation's mind, is the ability to, quite frankly, disconnect. It's not a big thing that I want to see. I have some of my staff members here. We have a liberal policy, if you will, that allows for remote work, up to three days a week, but they have two rules.
Bryan Elmore 0:34:01.8:
Number one: the office has to be staffed by at least one person every day, except on Fridays during football season, because it's so hard to get around. Number two is, at least one day a week, they have to be in the office together. This is their day in the office together this week. It's not in the office, but it provides that opportunity for collaboration, that connection we need to really get innovative and creative with how we plan our next model that we may build out in Anaplan, or plan what our budget guidelines are going to look like. That's one of the big things, is the employee recruitment and retention.
Bill Guerrero 0:34:49.1:
It's so nice to be up here with two SEC schools. I'm thinking of Bo Jackson right next to me. Anaplan: Bo Jackson? One word that was mentioned was efficiencies. Certainly, I'm always continuing to look for those efficiencies. I'm not a big proponent of always hiring. I'm like, 'Do I need to retool, upskill my existing employees, whatever that is?' Sometimes it works great. Then, they go to another job. You're like, 'Oh man, what am I going to do?' I would say, the importance of, 'What's the future that I'm looking at? Especially, which is crazy, you guys are in the SACUBO professional development. I'm the EACUBO professional development. It's like, okay, we have our workshop coming up in March. Our focus, our theme, is on artificial intelligence. That's our common theme. You would think that would be awesome. Like, everyone would be interested. The program submissions related to artificial intelligence are weak, to be honest. Kind of weak: I don't know if people are afraid of it; people don't fully understand it, or appreciate it.
Bill Guerrero 0:34:01.8:
The one way I look at it, that I'm not excellent at, and trying to find that is - how can I not use the term, because that's the name of one company's version, is looking for that copilot, of a tool that I can use, to make myself and my team more efficient. So, if artificial intelligence can be incorporated in some aspect with Anaplan, and with [unclear word 0:36:36.9]. A lot of it is, when you think about your business model, your institution, and maybe it's different. When you're talking about RCM, or you're talking about zero-based budgeting, or you're talking about all of these different, crazy things. I'm like, 'Shoot, I'm trying to survive. I don't even want to send my budgets out to the others, because they think they can grow their budget. I'm actually looking to reduce our budgets.' So, it's like, my budget model may not always work for somebody else, or if I go to a different institution or whatever. How is artificial intelligence going to be incorporated into this work, this software? I'm curious, but let alone throughout entire higher ed.
Justin Martin 0:37:16.5:
If we pull on that thread a little bit more, I just saw, I forget if it was this morning or yesterday, but there was a LinkedIn post by Anaplan about Anaplan Intelligence. It's, 'AI is not just a buzzword. It's very real. It's coming.' It's a Copilot of sorts, again, to pick up on that. From your collective experience in your current roles, and even seeing some of those submissions come in, I'll ask the open-ended question of, is higher ed ready for the impacts, the repercussions of AI? In terms of, again, we just finished talking about the political minefield of program sustainability and the threat of changing what our institutions look like from a staffing perspective. The good, the bad, everything in between: any thoughts on what that translates to, and the readiness of higher ed, as an overall, collective group?
Kelly Epting 0:38:18.3:
I'll keep my focus rather narrow. Whenever I think of AI, I think it might be 'co-planner', is a term that was mentioned at the first session. Some way of scrubbing through our data and looking at outliers. Looking at things that, 'Hey, pay attention to this.' We do have more time to analyze. If we could also have that assistant, that is also, 'Because we have all this connected data, this is popping out and this is not working.' I understand that will take some time. What my CFO and president were talking about, at one point, this was some months ago, but it was talking about the natural language and the ability to be able to ask questions at that level. I'm concerned, because I think that we are still having to interpret data. It's very important for my office, whenever you're asking the question, to provide consistent data. So, the answer can be any of five different things, and all five can be right: was it a system number? Is it a Columbia number? Is it non-current? Is it FTE? Is it headcount? There are so many ways. You were talking about the machine learning. You've got, 'Yes, I can answer your question, but you need to answer these five different things first. Then, I can spit out a number.' So, I see a lot of work ahead of us, in order for it to be usable, with that narrow scope that I'm mentioning.
Bryan Elmore 0:39:47.1:
I think we've somewhat embraced it on our campus, but really more from an academic standpoint and a research standpoint. Where we're behind is from a business operations standpoint. We've got some components of AI or machine learning that we are employing. Has it generated the efficiency that we thought? Maybe, maybe not. I know that we are probably about to embark on a platform that will do 100 per cent audit of our P-cards. Right now, we have three people doing P-cards. The audit program, it probably only gets 10 per cent of the transactions, maybe. With that AI, where they talk about haemorrhaging and needing people to be able to do this, I'm of the opinion, 'Let's work smarter, not harder.' The person who leads that unit is really of the same mindset, too. She said, 'If we're not going to do this, then I'm going to have to have people, because we're possibly missing lots of fraud. We're possibly missing double payments that we don't catch on a regular basis.' There's no telling how much we've spent over time in double payments that didn't get caught, because there's a human element involved.
Bryan Elmore 0:41:34.3:
We're going to try to tackle that. We've got to get on board. It's here, whether we like it or not. I think there's still a lot to be desired with some of the generative AI. Sometimes, it will spit out complete garbage. There are times when I've run it through and thought, 'It's really not bad. This was a pretty good capture of what I anticipated capturing.' I think it has a long way to go. Our acceptance of it on campus: we're going to have to, if we want to move forward as an institution.
Bill Guerrero 0:42:21.3:
A lot of Bruce Pearl of wisdom over here, by this guy.
Bryan Elmore 0:42:27.6:
That's an Auburn basketball coach, just so you guys know.
Bill Guerrero 0:42:34.1:
Yes, I would echo everything that was said here. In a lot of ways, it still blows me away. Here I am, sitting next to these two, and the sizes and scopes of their universities, and still, the same kinds of challenges. It blows me away, because a lot don't realize that. They might be able to absorb some of those challenges better than I can. Yes, you struck a chord with me, because literally, I have these questions, conversations, all the time with my accounts payable, my purchasing, my controller, about duplicate payments, fraud, you name it. It came up in my audit committee meeting this morning: it was about fraud, and fraud prevention, and so forth. So, I think AI, or if we look at machine learning, or RPA, we look at any of these kinds of things, they're scary. It's scary for that clerk who's been doing it for 25 years. I'm all about upskilling, but how is that going to happen?
Bill Guerrero 0:43:37.2:
It'd be really hard to happen, to make that be effective. For me, I need that for operational efficiencies. I don't want to hire more headcount. Then, I wouldn't need to save money. Literally, most recently, I had a $100,000 utility bill. Then, again, for $110 million. To me, a $100,000 mistake may not be evident right away at these universities. For me, that's a headcount. That's a headcount of a mistake. So, how do you preserve, prevent that stuff? So, AI is used in more of the conversations at my campus, in particular, it's what you mentioned: it's more on the faculty side. It's more on the plagiarism side. It's more on, 'Justin's LinkedIn post: is it generated by AI, or did he actually write it?' In all seriousness, we need to get it on the operational efficiency side.
Justin Martin 0:44:37.3:
My last question for you all, and then I'll turn everybody loose here to fire away. We talked about connected planning before, vision of the future. We've collectively talked about your own journeys within Anaplan. You all are, in some capacity, within the budget/finance realm within your institutions. We, at Tru, they're the people on campus we end up speaking with the most. Same with the Anaplan team, in terms of who they're trying to reach out to. In your perfect world, and again, through the lens of connected planning, is there some other area on your campus that you would love to get more involved with Anaplan, in terms of getting some of their processes truly connected into what you're doing? Any ideas there?
Kelly Epting 0:45:29.5:
I would say, I'd like to get more student data in. I've been talking about the other two ERPs: finance, HCM. I would like to get the Banner data in. I'm also thinking about housing.
Bryan Elmore 0:45:44.5:
I think, for us, the challenge that we face right now: I think we have a willingness, from most, to get on board. I think, the challenge that we face is having enough people to carry out this vision of connected planning. To be the model builders that will take this vision, which is in this empty head of mine, and take it to the next level. That's the challenge I think we face. I think there are more opportunities for us, from an HR standpoint. We do have HR data inside of ours. It's more of an analytics dashboard. One of the cool things about it is, it allows us to look at future retirement opportunities. When I say that, I mean, we're in a defined benefit program in the state. There are two tiers. If you were hired before a certain date, or if you were hired after a certain date, you participate, and your cost is a little bit more or a little bit less. We can look at that as an opportunity to do succession planning. I don't think we do a very good job of that. We've got the data in front of people. It allows us to look at, what's the average cost of a clerical or secretarial person on campus? It allows us to look at, what's the average cost of a faculty? We break things down by EEO skill code. Those are the things I feel like, we've got potential to tap into. It's just having the resources to be able to do it, I think is the hardest part. Really, trying to bring people along with us, and grab their hand and run with us, and pull in the same direction, instead of pushing back. I think that's the challenge we face.
Bill Guerrero 0:47:51.3:
I think you touched upon, or even the panel touched upon, the areas of focus. When I think of the budget, or your financials, for a private institution. Still, even with these institutions that have state support, our revenue is from students. Our expenses, half of it, is people. I talked to, it might even be one of your clients. I am not sure. It might it might be one of your clients. I was talking to them. I was like, 'Holy cow. Your employee expense is 80 per cent of your expense structure.' It blew me away. For me, in a private institution, it's roughly 50 per cent. So, I have all my own metrics in my head. If it's people and people, on both sides of the ledger, that kind of data, that kind of support, to help make effective decisions. Really, on the end, is academic program review, which you've already touched upon. I think, if Tru Ed, Anaplan can bang that out. I think you mentioned HelioCampus or whatever, as an example of academic program review. Who can really do that? Every school is going to have to do it, one way or the other. It's going to be a push to a shove. School may close when it's too late, but every school has got to do an academic program review. It's going to be a requirement. Even if it's going through gainful employment rules that are coming up. If you're producing degrees that don't get jobs, why are we doing them? So, it's going to be a requirement out there of academic program review. I would focus on that, because it affects both sides of the ledger.
Justin Martin 0:49:49.3:
Any questions from the audience? We can't let them off that easy!
Audience 0:49:58.1:
I have a question about the data. You mentioned there is some struggle on who owns the data. How do we get that into Anaplan? Do you have any suggestions for those conversations? We've definitely had some of those. I think it comes back to another point you said, as well: 'Oh, this is my money.' We're like, 'No, it's university money.' I think of it the same way with the data, that yes, you may own the process of reviewing that data or owning that data, but really, it's the university's data. I think that there's a barrier there on, how do we get more data to better make informed decisions?
Bryan Elmore 0:50:35.5:
I think the reluctance, specifically talking about HR data. I did a little sweet talking to make sure that it happened. I think, what we had to do is, sell the vision, to say, 'Okay, we're not going to put PII in here. Everything is done on an aggregate level.' Yes, if you're smart enough, which some of our people are, most of them probably are. Some of you probably thought I was going to say 'probably aren't'! Most of our people are smart enough to do enough to get down to that. We don't provide birth date. In aggregate, we provide their age. There are certain components of the pension plan, that you can retire at a certain age if you have a certain number of years. We're not going to put the birth date. We may have it, but it's not embedded in the data. We're able to aggregate the data in such a way. I think, if you really provide them a proof of concept, that it can work, and it can really help people make better decisions, I think that's the best way to win somebody over, and have that domino effect, where other people will jump on board. I think that happened with us. That's really what happened with so many different functional units, at least tangentially involved in the process.
Bill Guerrero 0:52:14.0:
I love your question. On your campuses, if you have a data scientist, people love those titles now. Those are new titles, really expensive titles, as well. Especially when we're talking about enrollment, and trying to get data on enrollment, and you have people who own the data. You're like, 'I just want to let you know. It's me, sitting in front of the board, talking about your enrollment data, that's projecting our financials. How accurate is that? Can I just dive into it, to really see?' When you get guardrails put up on that, or guardrails on payroll data, in some degree, because I need to look at it, in an early retirement plan, something like that. Then I start questioning the integrity of the data. I more often find out the challenges of the data. For them, they call me unlikable, because I'm like, 'It's a $10 million reforecast, based off of flawed data.' So, how do you gap that, with his charm versus my lack of charm, to get that bridge?
Bill Guerrero 0:53:31.2:
It's a really, really important question: how do you make that friendship? Sometimes, the data tzar, or data scientist, isn't in IT. Institutional research sometimes reports to academic affairs. The organizational structure, sometimes, is all over the place. In some places, IT reports to me; in some, it doesn't. It really is a challenge, because we should be all on the same team, you would think. I don't have an answer for you, because there are times it really works. This guy does. It's such a great question, because I do believe data is the currency of higher ed; it is. If you don't have good data, you're making poor decisions all the time.
Justin Martin 0:54:22.3:
One thing to mention, despite what Bill just said, these are all very charming and likable speakers, we've had up here. Please do not hesitate, across the board, to reach out, ask questions. We can get you connected with any of them. Please, they're all, again, very likable people.
Bill Guerrero 0:54:41.1:
My staff would beg to differ.
Justin Martin 0:54:43.4:
Okay.
Bryan Elmore 0:54:51.4
Darn it, I would have had more jokes!
Justin Martin 0:54:55.1
Thank you to these three, as well, and to our previous panelists. I really appreciate everyone sitting through this over the last couple of hours. Hopefully, it was very helpful, and you walked away with some tidbits. Again, please reach out to any of them; ask your questions. I'm speaking for all of them right now, but they're more than happy to connect and share their stories a little bit more. Thank you all very much.