The Service Excellence Program (SEP) Finance Stream kicked off in October 2020 to improve service quality, strengthen service culture, and deliver simpler, faster, and more efficient processes within finance services. The stream co-sponsors are Ran Lewin, AVP Budgets & Asset Management, Sanish Samuel, Interim Assistant Vice-President Finance & CFO and Phyllis Lepore Babcock, Executive Officer Osgoode Hall Law School.
What is the Finance stream improving?
Based on a review of benchmarking data and past and current initiatives and feedback from community, the Finance Stream has focussed its work on three key areas:
- Simplifying and digitizing purchasing
- Simplifying and digitizing expense reimbursement
- Modernizing budgeting, forecasting and reporting
What specific improvements have we made so far?
- Sped up reimbursement of expenses by ~4.8 business days by reducing Finance reviews
- Sped up reimbursement of expenses by a further ~3 business days by simplifying approvals and standardizing the process across York.
What improvements are coming next?
- A number of other improvements across the three focus areas are currently in implementation.
- We will also shortly commence work to speed up the processing of grant funding for researchers.
Further blog posts will follow as more improvements are implemented. For more information on the work of the SEP Finance stream, join the SEP mailing list for regular updates or contact SEP.