Process Improvements Helping to Save Time and Reallocate Resources

Since the launch of Georgia Tech’s strategic plan, many positive changes have occurred across the Finance and Planning (F&P) landscape and have led to improvements to the administrative tools and processes used to support the charge for Administrative Excellence, or AdminX. 

“Departments within Finance and Planning have made a concerted and collective effort to streamline processes that affect the entire Georgia Tech community,” said Jim Fortner, vice president for Finance and Planning and interim chief financial officer. “We are thrilled to see the commitment to continuous improvement and the way these departments have worked to identify and address these business needs.”  

The Office of the Bursar was one of the first departments in F&P to adopt process improvements in alignment with the AdminX initiative. One recent example is the implementation of the Flywire Banner Kit that helps international students wire funds to Georgia Tech. This automated process of posting funds to the student’s account eliminates the need for manual data entry and has shortened the processing time by two days — saving more than 800 hours a year. This has enabled staff to focus on other student payment support activities, including refunding credit balances on student accounts within 24 hours. 

Procurement and Business Services (PBS) has also made substantial changes. Earlier this year, in partnership with the Office of Information Technology (OIT), they deployed Robotic Process Automation for several processes, including one to help reduce the number of supplier invoices for which payment is held due to missing receipts. This ended up saving more than 600 hours per month, and those hours have now been reallocated to providing campus services and addressing more complex purchasing issues.   

Additionally, the PBS team updated the purchasing process by identifying opportunities to expand the types of items available for purchase in Amazon, Staples, and other authorized catalogs. These purchases are typically lower-cost and require fewer approvals, which makes purchasing easier and faster.    

Also in partnership with OIT, the Office of Institute Budget Planning and Administration is planning to deploy Workday Adaptive Planning in the fall. Workday is a reporting, forecasting, and analytics tool that will enable the Institute to seamlessly compile data from multiple sources to inform business decisions and further support the Institute’s new budget model. 

Looking ahead, the Georgia Tech community can expect to see continued improvements and innovations to the administrative processes from F&P in support of the AdminX initiative.