Financial Sustainability and Operational Excellence – Avoiding the ‘Rocks and Reefs’ with Cloud

Navigating today’s complex Multi Academy Trust (MAT) Back-Office operation is a key challenge for a Chief Financial Operations Officer (CFOO).  There are plenty of rocks and reefs waiting to catch out the business service support team that manage the Trust’s Finance, Procurement, Human Resources, Payroll and Reporting activities.

de Novo Solutions experiences with MAT clients have seen the continuing emergence of Trust CFOO underlining the important connection between finance and operations.  A properly equipped and empowered CFOO will better support the CEO, CFO, CIO and CPO in navigating the rocks and reefs while charting the way forward with one eye on the Trust’s balance sheet and the other on Back-Office operational performance.

Our MAT clients are circumnavigating challenges such as:

• Funding and financial sustainability: Balancing budgets, managing cash flow, and identifying alternative revenue streams
• Operational complexity: Managing procurement, risk management, alongside improving service effectiveness, and growing automation
• Compliance and regulatory requirements: Addressing education funding challenges, accounting and audit standards for regulatory compliance
• Resource allocation and efficiency: Evaluating the needs of individual schools with the overarching Trust vision
• Stakeholder engagement and communication: Building strong relationships and operating in a clear, and transparent manner

A Trust often experiences ‘choppier waters’ when maturing.  Merger and Acquisition (M&A) activities cause growing pains to be overcome to prevent unnecessary risk, and to bridge financial and operational poor performance.

M&A often leads to multiple legacy overlapping business applications as shipwrecked data silos or islands.  Islands that exist in their multiples across a Trust have the potential to cause danger if left unsecured, unmarked, and unmanaged.

Our MAT clients typically want to address major M&A headaches – looking for lifeboats to overcome:

• No single version of truth for Trust-wide reporting
• The increased information and data security risk
• Complex and costly data management operations

Post M&A consolidation is the essential ‘SOS lifejacket’ to possess.

Centralising processes, rationalising terms, suppliers, and systems, while developing new scalable and consistent ways of working.

Embedding data mastery, collaboration, and automation to deliver a connected Trust Back-Office experience moving forward.

de Novo Solutions helps MAT with Cloud Back-Office technology transformation.

Our digital experts are MAT Pilots and alongside the CFOO strengthen the Trust ‘bridge’ to be better equipped for all weather conditions.

A better-informed Trust C-Level Team will anticipate and predict conditions as opposed to just responding to them.

Determining the best course ahead to achieve the target and vision for the Trust’s future.

Harnessing modular and integrated Oracle and ServiceNow Cloud technologies – for the Back-Office will mean Trust automation and efficiency savings will follow.

Improving transparency, control, and continuous innovation MAT will deliver better educational outcomes benefitting the Trust, community, and pupils alike.

• Finance: Revolutionising Trust finance execution with streamlined solutions for budgeting, reporting, and forecasting reducing administration for improved strategic MAT decisioning
• Procurement: Collaborative procurement initiatives to leverage economies of scale within MAT by pooling resources and negotiating bulk contracts achieving significant cost savings across the Trust,
• Human Resources: Improving people and talent management strategies to ensure all Trust employees are attracted, developed and retained contributing to deliver inspiring education for pupils
• Payroll: Supporting sophisticated payroll eligibility rules and payroll processing frequencies with detailed cost control management and Trust compensation reporting and modelling analysis tools
• Reporting: Game-changing analytics with deep insights into financial performance, operational effectiveness using predictions to anticipate future trends, areas for improvement, and mitigate risk

So, if you are charged with navigating your Trust’s Back-Office future and this article has stimulated your nautical Cloud-ambitions for financial and people management activities – please do not hesitate to get in touch.

Let us navigate your success as experts in MAT focussed Oracle Cloud and ServiceNow digital Back-Office transformations