Budget and Finance Excellence

Budget and Finance Excellence

Budget and Finance Excellence serves as the guiding framework for aligning financial resources with Rice’s mission, supporting data-driven decision-making, enhancing customer-focused financial services, and fostering innovation.

Several key initiatives within the Budget and Finance Excellence portfolio are currently in progress:

Building Momentum Together Initiative

The Resource Optimization Initiative (ROI) has been rebranded as Building Momentum Together, reflecting a renewed focus on collaboration to enhance the customer experience across campus. The initiative aims to improve service interactions, streamline administrative processes, and drive efficiencies in alignment with the campus strategic plan.

Strategic Value Enhancement

This project is dedicated to identifying opportunities for operational savings. It will assess a comprehensive range of options across various areas, starting with a deep dive to better understand the operations in areas such as data and technology, sustainability, campus services, and real estate.

Strategic Sourcing Program
  • Elevate the Campus Experience: Streamline the procurement process and policies, empower users with effective tools and resources, leverage collective knowledge and resources, and foster a collaborative procurement community.
  • Leverage Data: Develop reporting, KPIs, and dashboards to establish SLAs, ensure transparency, and drive continuous performance improvement.
  • Modernize Procurement Technology: Assess the technology stack to identify fit-for-purpose tools that enhance strategic sourcing performance and improve stakeholder experience.
Research Administration Optimization

Conduct a business process mapping of RCA functions, aligning systems and roles, and evaluating changes since decisions made four years ago. Ensure all accounts are fully reconciled and supportable, and assess department structure, staffing levels, and skills.

You can find more details about the Building Momentum Together Initiative in this Fast Five article.

Budget Transformation Initiative

Implementation of an incentive-based budget model that aligns with the University's strategic goals. The new model will provide increased transparency while building incentives into the budget model to support schools' and administrative units' increased ability to understand and leverage opportunities, growth, possibilities, and outcomes.

10-Year Capital Planning

This project focuses on creating and maintaining a comprehensive 10-year Capital Plan for Rice University. The plan will serve as a strategic roadmap to guide capital development initiatives, align institutional priorities, and ensure sustainable resource allocation.

Financial Training

  • STARS Training 2.0: Builds on the STARS training core, focusing on communities of practice and fosters ongoing collaboration and dialogue with research-related departments

New Labor Distribution Process

The new Labor Distribution (LD) process streamlines operations by allowing campus users to update labor distribution accounts directly, replacing reliance on box folders and spreadsheets. This efficient approach enhances accessibility and simplifies account management.