Vice President of Finance and Administration V. Terry Dennis is making use of Jenzabar Analytics at Florida Southern College to simplify financial data collection and processing, which would make it easier to analyze data for strategic school planning. Jenzabar Analytics is a suite of descriptive, diagnostic and predictive analytics tools designed for higher education institutions.
“One of the first things that planners sitting around the table do is look at me and say, ‘What’s going to be the impact on our financial status?’” Dennis says. “And now we will be able to answer that.”
Florida Southern, located in Lakeland, Florida, has 3,300 undergraduate and graduate students, plus 475 faculty and staff members.
Portfolio of tools
Jenzabar Analytics uses analytics tools and capabilities to provide strategic insights that schools can leverage to increase agility, improve performance and identify new avenues for success. Its intuitive data models enable institutions to quickly spot relevant trends, make accurate projections and uncover hidden opportunities. Taking advantage of the tools made sense for Florida Southern’s leaders.
“I saw the benefit of being able to have an analytics program that was tied directly into our financial software; we could pull the data straight from the same database that we were already using,” Dennis says.
Dennis noted that working with Jenzabar early on has encouraged his team to provide input on Jenzabar Analytics, which will help the school achieve its longer-term objectives. “Jenzabar has always been a reliable partner for us to work with and pushes us to our goals,” Dennis says.
Smooth implementation
Jenzabar Analytics is primarily housed in Florida Southern’s finance department, but the creation of dashboards allows cabinet-level employees in other departments to access data so they can make comparisons and look at trends for strategic planning purposes.
“We’ll be able to press a button and spend more time analyzing data, rather than having to first calculate the result.”
Usually, bringing in new products requires a great deal of work for Dennis, but it was effortless setting up Jenzabar Analytics and training.
“The team that’s working on this understands the benefits that we will receive,” Dennis says.
Implementation also went smoothly. “We needed to code our general ledger accounts so that the analytics program knows what pieces of data goes into what areas,” Dennis says.
Better strategic planning
“We’ll be able to press a button and spend more time analyzing data, rather than having to first calculate the result,” Dennis says.
Dennis concludes that Jenzabar Analytics will serve a vital role in annual budgeting initiatives and will lead to better strategic planning.
“Jenzabar Analytics is going to be impactful when we are sitting at the strategic planning table,” Dennis says.
For more information, please visit jenzabar.com/jenzabar-one-analytics
