Carnegie Mellon University

The Future of Financial Planning at CMU

Carnegie Mellon University is embarking on The Future of Financial Planning (FFP) at CMU, a multi-phase budget and financial planning system implementation project that will improve annual budgeting, forward-looking forecasts, performance drivers and analysis, and reporting capabilities at the university.


Expected Outcomes

New and improved process optimization will integrate with a new system to finally move us away from disparate shadow systems under highly manual processes and will provide an opportunity to improve collaboration and communication between the central Finance Division and campus units throughout the budget and financial planning process. 

Additionally, the future processes and system will provide scenario analysis capabilities with more effective and accurate long-term and unit-level planning, budgeting, and forecasting. This system will also facilitate the creation of consistent university-wide and unit-level financial reports to promote more informed leadership decision-making.

Expected project outcomes include:

  • Streamlined processes and improved annual budgeting, as well as forward-looking forecasts, performance drivers, analysis, and reporting.
  • Improved functionality for users entering financial data, creating efficiencies and more meaningful reporting.
  • Ability to conduct more advanced analysis to enable real-time decision making related to the university’s long-term planning, budgeting, and forecasting.