Contributed on behalf of Gerald Hector, Vice President for Finance and Administration.
On the heels of President Rochon’s March 5, 2015 campus discussion, we will be announcing some steps towards engaging the campus around the ideas and concepts we received via the various feedback loops that were established. We are very pleased to see so many comments from the campus around ideas on alternate sources of revenues, but more importantly ways that we can streamline costs at the College to ensure that our precious resources are spent in strategic and prudent ways that benefits student education.
Needless to say there will be more discussions on these and other topics during the course of the Spring 2015 semester and beyond in the monthly “Dollars and $ense” series and other venues. Today, in particular, we would like to share with the campus some of the areas that we will be focused on in the immediate future, with the goal of having meaningful strategies in place to start the 2015-2016 fiscal year. The measures listed below will not be successful if we do not have full cooperation from the campus in general; however, given the tenets of President Rochon’s talk and the comments received from the campus at large, we strongly believe the time is now to move on some of these issues and capture the good work that has been done to date.
Following suggestions made by staff and faculty, and also some internal analyses that have been ongoing, we will examine a number of areas of expenditure including the following three in the short run (four months): meals and entertainment, professional services, and credit card usage.
Meals and Entertainment
For the 2015-2016 budget, meals and entertainment account for approximately $2.3 million which prompted a historical look at this budget line item. A cursory review revealed that the College spends a sizeable amount of funds on food for receptions, meetings and gatherings all year long; however, there is a noticeable spike in the last three months of the fiscal year (March through May). A review of a three year average of events through Conference and Events Services confirms that fact. As a point of reference, requests for catered events in the upcoming months of the current fiscal year are higher than the prior three years. On a prospective basis, we will be looking into measures to enforce the current policies of catered meetings, coupled with some possible combinations of year end receptions and other catered events throughout the course of the year. The goal is to reduce the total budgeted amount by approximately $1 million in future years, starting with fiscal year 2015-2016.
Professional Services
During the Zero Based Budgeting exercise, we learned of a number of areas where there are needs for consultants and other professional services that are not available on campus. Some of the requests were for improvements in current services, and to meet industry standards in others; however some of the requests can be construed under the guise that if more professional development was provided to our current employees, the need for professional services and consultants can be limited. Considering that this line item in the budget accounts for approximately $14 million, we will be engaging with all constituent groups in a more detailed fashion to try to bridge the gap between the need for greater professional development versus the more costly consultant/professional services route. There is no dollar goal at this point; however, the tenets behind this review were clearly evident from the Zero Based Budgeting exercise.
Credit Card Usage
Currently the College has approximately 1,240 credit cards that have been issued to individuals for various reasons surrounding purchasing and travel. As a result, we are seeing total annual spend on these card in the neighborhood of approximately $7.5 million. Of the total number of cards issued, approximately 480 are purchasing cards, with the remainder being travel cards. An impromptu survey done under the auspices of the 2014 purchasing study revealed that the purchasing cards are being used as a first resort for purchasing because of challenges with the iProcurement system. With the new “IC Marketplace” (Unimarket) system being configured to be launched in the summer of 2015, we are investigating a strategy to reduce the number of purchasing cards that have been distributed, and request that all purchases of items using college resources be made through the “e-Marketplace” system that will be established. The goal here is to bring greater discipline and clarity to our purchasing processes, and to ensure that purchases are approved prior to binding the College for payment, and also create a process where we can take advantage of volume discounts and also timely payment discounts that currently elude the College.
On a longer timeframe, but within calendar year 2015, we will form task forces to examine two areas of expenses at the College: student wages and office equipment deployment (and the resulting costs for toner, supplies and upkeep).
Student Wages
We are forming a task force of a broad cross section of campus constituents to do an in depth study on how we deploy student wages on the campus both for aid purposes, and also for experiential learning. This task force will work on weaving together aspects of Federal Work Study (and its related federal matching requirements), New York State laws, experiential learning opportunities for students, and also additional aid elements to assist students with the cost of education. This task force will be comprised of individuals who are not directly involved with the current awarding of aid, assignment of jobs, or work in Human Resources. Individuals who work in these areas will serve as expert resources. The goal is to create a streamlined, transparent and equitable process for awarding and assigning work, and the subsequent payment of student wages.
Printer and Copier Toner and Supplies
We are launching an analysis of costs associated with the College’s current practices around the deployment of copiers and printers across campus. This comes to light given the fact that one of the major costs in our office supplies is toner and copy paper. A committee has been formed that will spend the remainder of the spring semester, and a portion of the summer analyzing our current practices and make recommendations that can get us closer to a more efficient process for faculty and staff printing and copying. This work will involve us working with current vendors to see what options are available to the college.
https://www.ithaca.edu/intercom/article.php/20150409145336867