Findings
Employees and campus partners shared consistent themes about what isn’t working in finance:
- Processes feel overly complex
- Turnaround times are too long
- Roles and responsibilities are unclear
- Technology doesn’t match the work that needs to happen
What people working in finance need most
- Better training and documentation
- More help with contracts
- Improved PCard processes
What finance leaders also identified needs:
- Large number of small volume system users with limited expertise
- Compliance and accuracy needs
- Improved accuracy to address increased scrutiny from the Board of Trustees
The recommendations moving forward reflect both what campus asked for and what finance leaders flagged as critical to building a stronger, more reliable financial infrastructure.
Key Recommendations that Informed These Changes
The following recommendations were developed to address the challenges identified through campus outreach and discovery work.
Financial Services Campus Support Center: Centralizing financial transaction processing will reduce administrative burdens on faculty and staff and reduce duplicated efforts from a large number of low-volume users. Functions to be centralized include customer service, purchase orders, invoice entry, and PCard transaction processing.
Strategic Budgeting Campus Support Hubs: This recommendation presents two options to address the issues of SFO turnover, inconsistent training, and lack of direct accountability to central finance operations.
- Option A: Organize SFOs into service hubs with reporting lines to central finance leadership
- Option B: Maintain current reporting lines while strengthening accountability through standardized roles, training and service-level agreements.
Process
The finance work group included seven members from various finance functions across the university. The group met nine times to create a list of processes that were inefficient or overly complex.
Additionally, insights were gathered from finance leaders, the Faculty Senate Budget Committee, the Academic Leadership Team, and the campus Senior Fiscal Officers group.
In March of 2025, MGT Consulting held a listening session with 123 participants. The sessions were followed by a survey that was shared in PSU's employee newsletter.
Finance recommendations were consolidated into a Year One Report and presented to campus during a town hall meeting in October 2025.
Why Finance?
Finance was selected for the Operational Excellence process because, as outlined in the Huron Support Services & Operational Review in 2022, many financial tasks are duplicated across campus, consuming significant time and resources and creating inconsistent experiences. Improving these processes will build more resilient structures, strengthen partnerships with departments, and ensure employees have the training, tools, and clarity they need to succeed. The goal is to streamline financial operations, improve accountability, and create more consistent and sustainable budgeting and transaction practices.