PSOM

As you can imagine, March was largely focussed on discussions with the PSOM Steering Committee to finalise the proposed structure for Corporate Services.   You’ll recall that the consultation on the functional model closed on 6 March and the PSOM Steering Committee have considered all of the feedback in order to arrive at the final proposed structure for Corporate Services (which, as you now know, was presented to staff on 29 March, marking the beginning of the consultation period).

University Leadership Team

ULT met as usual throughout March and, at the 5 March meeting, Bernie Marshall presented an update on non-pay savings.   I’d like to thank Bernie and her team who have done a great job with this initiative so far – it looks as though we are on track to achieve the original target of £4m non-pay savings if we continue to manage spend this way. 

On 20 March, ULT held an away-day event  and Linda and I presented initial student number targets and financial planning information, giving ULT an early view of 2019/20 and future years.  We already know there are challenging times ahead due to the demographic dip, cost inflation and the flat fee, so the University will need to continue to think carefully about how it manages its finances during this period; the outcomes of ULT’s discussion will be fed back to the business units to enable them to finalise and submit their own plans by the end of  April.   ULT also received an update on the ‘Hallam Model’ from Roger Eccleston and considered the various challenges and barriers around delivering the model.   The Vice-Chancellor shared the learnings from his recent visits to institutions in Australia and Hong Kong and Mike Ward convened a session on corporate risk in the early afternoon, in which ULT participated enthusiastically.

Board of Governors

In early March,  I attended the Board of Governors (5^th) and Audit and Risk Committee (14^th) where I presented a number of business items at each of the meetings;  if you’re ever interested to read the minutes of the University’s various Board and Committee meetings, you’ll find them posted on the University’s website – https://www.shu.ac.uk/about-us/governance-and-strategy/governance/board-committee-meetings

BUFDG Quarterly Meeting

I travelled to Manchester for the regional meeting of BUFDG on 6 March–a quarterly meeting and a key opportunity for me to network with other FDs/CFOs across the region. Topics for discussion included (i) procurement, where we explored the possibilities of regional procurement teams and how they might collaborate in the future; (ii) an update from Ernst & Young on financial resilience and the current financial strains many universities are experiencing and (iii) a pension update from UUK on the USS.

Confederation of Business Industry (CBI)

On 7 March, I represented the Vice-Chancellor at a private roundtable discussion with the CBI.  This event was hosted by John Allan ( President of the CBI) and his Executive team, and included a select group of the region’s most senior business leaders and stakeholders to hear directly from CBI, their insights into the current economic and political situation.  The discussion gave all of us an opportunity to put forward our views and to help to shape the CBI’s messaging in their regular interaction with organisations such as the BEIS.  This was a very high profile event, providing another useful network opportunity for the University.

University’s Mental Health Day (7th March)

World Mental Health Day took place on 7 March and I supported various communications and a programme of events which the University had coordinated along with our friends and colleagues in the Students’ Union.   Last week I was approached again as Mental Health Champion, this time to lend my support to activities taking place during the Mental Health Awareness Week (13-19 May) – I’ll let you know more about this when details become available.

University Financing Arrangements

I mentioned last month that we’d just about finalised new financing arrangements with Barclays and Santander banks and now I can confirm that both facility agreements were signed and executed on 13 March and are now operational.   This has been a long, but very thorough, process and I’d like to convey my thanks to everyone who was involved in bringing this to its conclusion, especially Simon, who handled the bank legal negotiations admirably. 

Strategy, Planning and Insight

I attended SPI/SIDs team away day on 13 March, which was very useful for meeting members of the newly formed SID team, and thinking about the future role and activities of Strategy, Planning and Insight.

Tableau & Alteryx

Last Friday, members of the Finance and Planning team were invited to a demonstration from Neil Davidson, the Head of Student Statutory Report and Analytics at Nottingham University.  Neil was invited to Sheffield Hallam by Rav Ubhi-Adams so we could learn more about Nottingham’s experience with Tableau and Alteryx and the model they have developed for student number planning.  Neil was an enthusiastic advocate of Alteryx, which the SID team are trialling at present, and it was exciting to learn how much potential capability it has for us and how it might help us address a range of Planning and Finance challenges.