Attain Partners has joined Formstack to develop an Admissions Application Template designed to accelerate your Salesforce Admissions Connect implementation. Your Admission Application can be the first interaction a potential student has with your campus. It’s important to get it right. The Admissions Application Template Accelerator reduces time and expense to go live with Education Cloud Admissions Connect.
With over 16 years of experience working with Education Institutions, Attain Partners has documented best practices that inform the Admissions Application Template Accelerator including a set of baseline forms prebuilt leveraging Education Cloud Admissions Connect.
Key Features
Delivers pre-filled forms
Supports graduate and undergraduate applications
Enables document upload
Provides conditional logic and branching based on program, or residency
Delivers application progress in real time
Security
Mobile ready
Why Formstack?
Formstack for Salesforce is an all-in-one forms, documents, and digital signature solution that empowers anyone to automate processes and streamline the customer experience—all without leaving Salesforce. Used by more than 800 colleges and universities worldwide, Formstack’s solutions work natively within Salesforce to allow schools to transform outdated paper processes into powerful digital workflows that span across several departments. From enrollment to course evaluations, Formstack makes it easy to reduce data chaos and enhance the student experience.
Based in McLean, Va., Attain Partners is a leading management, technology, and compliance consulting firm delivering services and solutions to advance client missions across the education, nonprofit, healthcare, and state and local government landscapes. We’re an innovative and values-driven firm working to disrupt the status quo to change the world and improve the lives of those we serve.
Serving more than 70 of the top 100 U.S. research institutions and 100% of Ivy League Schools, Attain Partners has completed more than 1,000 Salesforce projects and counting. For more information or to speak with one of our experts, please contact us here.
About the Author
Susan Tobes is a Senior Director of Strategic Growth at Attain Partners, focused on strategy and sales across the education, nonprofit, and healthcare sectors. With a 35-year career focused on the delivery of technology and consulting services, Susan brings deep expertise, commitment to the communities that she serves, and an untiring drive for success.
https://attainpartners.com/wp-content/uploads/Website-Header-Image_Full-Width_Formstack-Webinar.png5361600Olivia PychaOlivia Pycha2021-04-26 14:55:002023-05-23 15:38:07Formstack Based Application Template
At an organizational level, it is imperative that institutions revisit their culture, behavioral norms, operations, and structure to determine whether they promote and value diversity of stakeholders and thinking, provide a sense of belonging for all, and remove barriers to success. Achieving these goals will not only position institutions as leaders in their fields or industries but will also create a stronger and more effective culture in which all are valued and contribute to the best of their ability, resulting in better overall institutional outcomes.
Next, the institution should work with its stakeholders to identify its strategic DE&I priorities—including related goals—that align to the vision and commitment statement to ensure the organization can continue along its DE&I journey. For higher education institutions, these priorities will likely address the people dimension of the organization (faculty, staff, students, and alumni), the educational agenda (training and curriculum itself), and the various communities (campus, local, regional, national, and global). For each priority, the organization should articulate goals, outcomes, strategies, and actions to support achieving DE&I transformation. Outcomes could include increasing diversity in the larger community, shifting the culture to one of greater belonging, and removing barriers to success. As part of this, institutions will then define the tactical actions needed to achieve these strategies. To promote inclusion, this will include defining key behaviors, as well as establishing training and development programs. To promote equity, it will require a special focus on mitigation and support strategies related to removing barriers. Examples of the specific tactics that can be leveraged to increase DE&I can be found in the graphic below.
Measure Progress
As colleges and universities progress on their DE&I journey, they will need to implement an approach and mechanisms to measure their progress related to each priority. To meet this objective, it is critical to define success via achievable outcomes.Without this step, colleges and universities will not have a benchmark to support their learning efforts and help determine if they are achieving the desired results. As a sub-step of this activity, organizations should define key performance indicators (KPIs). This will likely include metrics such as percentage of leadership, student, faculty, postdocs, and staff by race and sex, percent retention and graduation rates by race, sex, and discipline, achievement rates by race, sex and discipline (i.e., A, B,C and D,F,W rates[1]), and survey results on engagement, inclusion, and equity (i.e., campus climate questionnaire). Defining these outcomes will enable continuous monitoring, reporting, and mid-course corrections. This will position the institution to iterate and update their strategies on a recurring basis to ensure they align with the vision. Each college and university will require a unique approach on their DE&I journey, and measuring the activities will ensure that they can be adjusted to meet each institution’s needs.
Schools with leading DE&I programs, such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)[2] and Stanford[3], have elected to make dashboards of their equity- and inclusivity-related data public. This extra step may not be viable for institutions with new DE&I programs. However, all colleges and universities should establish a methodology for tracking and reporting on the KPIs and align ownership to a specific role or group. This will ensure that the institution can continually monitor its progress, and strategically and collectively address emerging trends.
Create Permanent Change
Lastly, transparency and the effective use of change management techniques will be critical to the success of these efforts. Creating an inclusive culture of belonging where barriers are removed will require a culture shift across the large and complex institutional community. To be effective, the institution should consider change management tactics such as communication, training, coaching, and resistance management. Colleges and universities should not shy away from acknowledging past wrongs and missteps on the DE&I journey to ensure they are creating a culture of transparency and accountability. This will ensure that the changes are fully adopted and the DE&I vision can be realized.
These efforts will require grit and determination on the part of the organization, as the DE&I evolution cannot occur overnight. Rather, it will take many years of applied effort to create an inclusive campus where barriers are removed, and all members of the community can belong.
Attain Partners has worked with both public and private higher education institutions across the United States to successfully develop and implement their DE&I strategy and outcomes.
Learn about Attain Partners’ Inclusion, Diversity, Equality, and Allyship (IDEA) Performance Maturity Frameworkhere.
For more information or to speak with one of our experts, please contact us here.
About the Authors
Reshma Patel-Jackson is a Senior Principal and the Practice Leader for the Management Consulting business of Attain Partners. She is responsible for and involved in a wide range of consulting initiatives, primarily on change management, strategic planning, business process improvement, organizational assessments, project management, and research administration. Mrs. Patel-Jackson is a Prosci® Certified Change Management Practitioner who has extensive knowledge and training in the field. She has provided strategic planning, project management, change management, internal audit, compliance, and costing services for a variety of not-for-profit, Higher Education, government contracting, and commercial clients.
Diane Scott is a Senior Consultant at Attain Partners and possesses over twelve years of experience supporting Higher Education. She is a process improvement professional with a demonstrated history of management consulting and client relationship management. Her detailed understanding of university business helps her support client needs related to strategy, business process improvement, and change management. She holds an MBA from the Georgetown-McDonough School of Business, is a certified research administrator (CRA), and is a Prosci® Certified Change Management Practitioner.
[1] ABC and DFW rates refer to the grade achieved by each individual student. A, B, C, D, and F refer to the standard grading scale. W refers to withdrawals.
https://attainpartners.com/wp-content/uploads/Blog-Image_DEI-Part-2.png10001540Joe DePalmaJoe DePalma2021-04-13 20:03:112023-04-17 17:03:14Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Higher Education Part 2
Over the past year and a half, the world has witnessed multiple events that have shone a bright light on systemic racism and social injustice. These events have served as a catalyst to identify attitudes that contribute to these conditions and shift established mindsets towards creating new systems that result in increased diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I). At an organizational level, it is imperative that institutions revisit their culture, behavioral norms, operations, and structure to determine whether they promote and value diversity of stakeholders and thinking, provide a sense of belonging for all, and remove barriers to success. Achieving these goals will not only position institutions as leaders in their fields or industries but will also create a stronger and more effective culture in which all are valued and contribute to the best of their ability, resulting in better overall institutional outcomes.
This moral imperative has particular meaning for higher education institutions that have the opportunity not only to more effectively support and welcome all stakeholders and constituents, but also to actively influence the perspectives of their students who will shape the future. However, institutions face additional challenges when compared to organizations in other industries due to the complex and varied nature of the “communities” they impact and influence. To effectively address DE&I, colleges and universities need to understand and pay attention to the needs of all the communities they touch, including the various campus communities (e.g., faculty, staff, student, and alumni) and the non-campus communities (e.g., local area, regional, national, and global). To achieve true diversity, equity, and inclusion, institutions will need to develop and implement a strategy that uses a variety of tactics, including, but not limited to:
Integrating lessons on anti-racism in curricula
Implementing talent sourcing pipeline programs for the underrepresented
Removing barriers to success and engaging broadly on DE&I issues within the local and regional communities
An effective strategy will require strong, top-down leadership commitment, while also emphasizing active engagement from across the organization.
The following provides a high-level overview on developing a strategy that supports colleges and universities on their DE&I journey.
Creating and Implementing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Strategy
Define Your Vision
The primary success factor in any cultural transformation effort is commitment from the top of the organization. This is especially true for the behavioral changes that are required to achieve DE&I objectives. To gain the commitment, the institution should work to both develop a clear and concise vision that aligns with the institution’s values and cultural goals, and to identify the relevant communities, stakeholders, and their needs. Particular attention should be paid to discussing barriers that prevent specific communities from engaging and performing at their best. The “why” behind the vision statement must also be articulated to ensure there is a common understanding for how activities align with the organization’s mission, values, and culture. An important part of “visioning” will also be to review and align the organization’s core values to the DE&I vision. As a sub-set of these activities, the institution should clearly define what “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion” means to them and their stakeholder communities (see above for suggested definitions).
Adopt a Commitment Statement
Once the vision is defined, leadership should then develop and adopt a clear and concise commitment statement to be shared broadly with their stakeholders. The statement should support a culture of belonging, removal of barriers, and leadership accountability. This declaration cannot stand by itself and requires an associated communication plan that must be coordinated with leadership across the institution to truly effectuate the change.
Create a Structure of Support
To ensure the appropriate structure is in place to support a robust DE&I vision, the institution may also need to review its existing organizational model. An effective model may be more—or less—centralized depending on the institution’s specific needs. For example, many organizations are creating a new Associate Vice President for DE&I role. This leader serves as the executive sponsor for the DE&I strategy and plans, and coordinates with other related entities as needed. This ensures that activities are executed in alignment with the vision, values, and the commitment statement. Further, higher education institutions may consider creating a “shared” leadership model where certain communities within the institution (e.g., schools within the institution) have their own DE&I champion to ensure that the specific needs of targeted stakeholder groups within the broader institution are met. Regardless of how centralized the DE&I organizational model is, colleges and universities should consider creating the structure needed to engage all voices across the enterprise. In this way, the organizational model includes both top-down and bottom-up structures, with appropriate feedback loops, to inform the DE&I journey.
Learn about Attain Partners’ Inclusion, Diversity, Equality, and Allyship (IDEA) Performance Maturity Frameworkhere.
For more information or to speak with one of our experts, please contact us here.
About the Authors
Reshma Patel-Jackson is a Senior Principal and the Practice Leader for the Management Consulting business of Attain Partners. She is responsible for and involved in a wide range of consulting initiatives, primarily on change management, strategic planning, business process improvement, organizational assessments, project management, and research administration. Mrs. Patel-Jackson is a Prosci® Certified Change Management Practitioner who has extensive knowledge and training in the field. She has provided strategic planning, project management, change management, internal audit, compliance, and costing services for a variety of not-for-profit, Higher Education, government contracting, and commercial clients.
Diane Scott is a Senior Consultant at Attain Partners and possesses over twelve years of experience supporting Higher Education. She is a process improvement professional with a demonstrated history of management consulting and client relationship management. Her detailed understanding of university business helps her support client needs related to strategy, business process improvement, and change management. She holds an MBA from the Georgetown-McDonough School of Business, is a certified research administrator (CRA), and is a Prosci® Certified Change Management Practitioner.
https://attainpartners.com/wp-content/uploads/MicrosoftTeams-image-8.png10001540Olivia PychaOlivia Pycha2021-04-06 17:11:142023-01-18 12:04:18Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Higher Education
COVID-19, campus shutdowns, shrinking budgets, and F&A rate extensions require that administrators consider the investment in research and impact on future years’ F&A rates. More than ever before colleges and universities are planning for the next rate proposal and examine techniques to identify and optimize cost allocation to benefitting activities. For example, many institutions took advantage of the opportunity to defer F&A proposals based on FY20 until FY21. In this four-part blog series, we examine the considerations of four important initiatives including: a diagnostic review to improve costing processes via a dry run exercise; the benefits of proper utility metering; updating capital asset depreciation expense; and the evolution of the library infrastructure.
Part 4: The Evolution of The Library Infrastructure
Academic research libraries support their educational institutions’ missions to conduct research, including sponsored research. Colleges and universities have performed library cost analysis studies, typically employing user surveys, for at least thirty-five years to quantify the extent to which their libraries support sponsored research. The Library cost pool is uncapped and included in the Facilities component of the F&A rate. This has given institutions an incentive to measure the extent to which their academic libraries support sponsored research.
In the absence of a library cost analysis study, the standard allocation methodology prescribes that library expenses shall be allocated to the institution’s major functions first on the basis of primary categories of users, including students, faculty and professional employees, and other users.
The purpose of the user surveys is to estimate the percentage of total library use associated with organized research for each of the library’s major activities. Each cost center identified has a corresponding allocation base with usage data collected from the library user surveys (e.g., circulation costs are allocated based on circulation usage reported during the user surveys).
The surveys involve the selection of a random sample of time periods for conducting each survey distribution and collection of surveys and an estimation of the proportion of library activities which are attributable to benefitting activities including organized research.
Academic libraries vary in their support of research, however, science, medical, and engineering libraries services and collections exhibit the most support for organized research at different universities. Journals and interlibrary loan/document delivery are consistently the most highly used collection and service in support of research. In most cases, electronic services use approximates traditional services in its level of use to support research.
Conclusion
As institutions transition in this new environment, there are various ways to create greater efficiency and improve margins associated with research services such as evaluating facilities related costs, implementing space productivity analyses for research programs, and/or recovering as much cost as possible from the F&A function. Institutions that do not act will likely see margins continue to shrink, making it difficult to facilitate cost recovery or generate the funding necessary to support productive programs.
Note: This article was first published in the January/February Issue of the NCURA magazine. Download the PDF here.
About the Author
Mark Davis is a Partner and founding member and leader of Attain Partners. He has been consulting for 35 years and has worked as a key business advisor to more than 100 major research universities and academic medical centers, nonprofits, and hospitals. Mr. Davis is experienced in federal cost policy, reimbursement and regulatory compliance, research finance, and grants management. Mr. Davis assists institutions to accomplish strategic, organizational, and financial goals, and manage risk and compliance.
https://attainpartners.com/wp-content/uploads/[email protected]10001540Olivia PychaOlivia Pycha2021-03-22 22:01:292023-03-14 13:13:13Executive Management: Considerations for Focusing on the F&A Future—Part 4: The Evolution of The Library Infrastructure
We are thrilled to announce that Attain Partners and the Amp Impact team from Vera Solutions have officially launched a partnership. Attain Partners is now among a very exclusive group of partners around the world enabled to implement Amp Impact; a product built right on the Salesforce platform and changing the way organizations track and measure impact.
Why I’m Excited
I’ve been working for and with nonprofit organizations since 2007. In that time, I’ve had the distinct privilege of engaging with hundreds of mission-centric organizations dedicated to creating change in their communities. While there were many flavors and sounds to the conversation, each and every one of those organizations were grappling with the fundamental questions of, “Is it working? Are we having the impact we’re striving for? Are students, clients, participants and/or our community better off because of the work we’re doing?” These can be incredibly difficult questions to answer.
I’m excited about Attain Partners’s new partnership with Amp Impact because it helps nonprofits begin to answer these questions. I believe Amp Impact can be a game changer for nonprofits because:
It meets you where you’re at. Amp Impact works with any indicators and evaluation frameworks. Your program team doesn’t need to adapt your measurement framework to fit a tool. In addition, you can expand your existing use of Salesforce. Amp Impact can be layered on to your current program/case management solution in order to measure outcomes. Alternatively, you can start with outcomes measurement. Amp Impact can serve as a stand alone measurement and evaluation tool to aggregate portfolio impact data.
It brings data together to understand performance. Sometimes program data just can’t be stored in Salesforce. You may have funder mandated or other required systems you simply must keep using. The unintended consequences are often data silos, duplicative data entry by staff, and spending countless hours to report on performance. Amp Impact eases that burden and allows you to import program data right into your evaluation frameworks so that you can measure aggregate performance about a program or the organization.
It’s ‘leaning in’ to Salesforce. Amp Impact isn’t just built on Salesforce with a narrow set of use cases. Just the opposite, in fact. Amp Impact is architected to take advantage of some of the best features of Salesforce serving nonprofits. It’s flexible and capitalizes on Salesforce’s drag-click-drop configuration to build out frameworks, indicators, etc. All Amp Impact features (including Indicators, Frameworks, Implementation Plans, Financials, and Narrative Submissions) can be used on any standard or custom Salesforce object. It can be used in Salesforce Communities, further extended to Tableau, on mobile and more. Amp Impact can add value without limiting how you use Salesforce today or in the future.
The Future
Our communities depend on the social sector; especially during challenging times like we’ve experienced over the last year. However, nonprofit organizations are constantly pushed to do more with less and simultaneously demonstrate success with data. In response, Attain Partners is doubling down on our commitment to the social sector. We believe Amp Impact closes the ‘input to impact’ gap challenging many nonprofits.
Attain Partners is thrilled to formally partner with Amp Impact. We believe that by implementing Vera Solutions’ innovative product, we can empower organizations to generate holistic insights that will inform decisions and ultimately transform programs—and our communities—for the better.
Interested in learning more? Email i[email protected] and our team will coordinate time to connect.
Attain Partners is committed to providing innovative solutions for our higher education clients by putting our users and their customers at the center of our work. With over 15 years of Salesforce–focused higher education expertise and a dominant presence in recruiting and admissions (R&A), Attain Partners provided valuable insight into a new feature set that will continue to set Salesforce apart from the competition. Introducing Admissions Connect (AC), an Education Data Architecture (EDA) based solution for recruiting and admissions organizations to process applications easily and efficiently. Attain Partners’ deep understanding of R&A and our extensive Salesforce expertise can truly deliver game changing results for our clients.
As the strategic partner for ongoing success at a leading university, the university-wide CRM team selected Attain Partners to guide them through a full R&A solution, supported by key business process modernization and change management activities. We believe that people, process, and technology–focused delivery creates project success. This Attain Partners advantage supported the university to be selected as the very first cohort participant for AC.
Leveraging the power of AC, Attain Partners can easily configure a one screen reader for reading applications with supporting information such as transcripts, letters of recommendations, and test scores. Checklists make it easy not only for R&A users but applicants to quickly identify what, if anything, is remaining so that admission decisions can be made more efficiently. Applicants can provide additional information for use in their admissions decision right from Experience Cloud. Additionally, the power of Salesforce API’s allows for Common App integration for quick access to all application data.
We are thrilled to be the first partner changing the R&A game for our clients.
Learn more
Watch our on-demand webinar, How to Create an Optimized, Mobile-ready Application Experience, to learn more about how Attain Partners leveraged Formstack to develop an Admissions Application Template designed to accelerate your Salesforce Admissions Connect implementation.
Interested in learning more about Salesforce’s Admissions Connect? Contact us here and one of our experts will follow-up with you directly.
https://attainpartners.com/wp-content/uploads/Blog-Image_Admissions-Connect.png10001540[email protected][email protected]2021-03-15 17:06:342021-08-26 16:06:11Salesforce Admissions Connect - Yield the Best Class!
We’re kicking off the spring season with our annual participation in the National Council of University Research Administrators’ (NCURA) Financial Research Administration (FRA) and Pre-Award Research Administration (PRA) Annual Conferences—and this year, we’re excited to make our NCURA debut as Attain Partners! Talk to our team, visit our virtual booth, and learn more about this exciting evolution and what it means to your organization. We may have a new name, but our steadfast commitment to helping the research community thrive remains the same.
Though still virtual, we’ll be providing the same informative education sessions and workshops during both events. Read on for details from our team of experts.
FRA
Hot Topics in Post-Award Administration
Susan Sedwick, Vivian Holmes, and Cynthia Hope
March 16, 2021, 3:45p – 5:00p
Hopefully spring will bring hope for a return to a somewhat more normal work environments for our offices, normalizing of current hot topics and we will have moved on to the next big group of challenges. I will assemble and moderate a panel of senior level post-award administrators to present the next five biggest issues that will face our profession. After all, it is the Endless Frontier.
The Role of the Post-Award Office in Foreign Influence Compliance
Susan Sedwick, Ara Tahmassian, and Jim Luther
March 17, 2021, 2:00p – 3:15p
Addressing foreign influence concerns does not stop with pre-award and the post-award office has a critical role in monitoring throughout the life cycle of a project. Effective strategies go beyond a “one and done” approach and educating post-award and departmental staff can expand your capabilities to provide oversight. I will assemble a panel of senior post-award administrators who have played an active role at their institutions in foreign influence compliance.
WORKSHOPS
Workshop: Foreign Influence: Responding to Agency Inquiries and Non-Compliance
Susan Sedwick, Kim Melville-Smith, and Trey Atchley III
March 22, 2021, 1:00p – 5:00p
Where do you start when you suspect non-compliance or when you receive an inquiry from a sponsor that one of your researchers has not complied fully with reporting outside activities and interests? When non-compliance is suspected, knowing what steps must be taken initially to ensure your institution and your science is protected. Seasoned research administrators will provide guidance on how to investigate allegations of non-compliance in science security and respond to agency inquiries with insights from what was learned from the NIH Survey on foreign influence practices at institutions.
PRA
Educating Clinical Researchers on Foreign Influence Concerns
Susan Sedwick, Martha Ogilvie, and Winona Ward
March 23, 2021, 2:00p – 3:15p
When we think of clinical researchers and foreign influence, our first thought is of global humanitarian impact of research and the importance of medicine without borders. For most clinical researchers it is antithetical to fathom questioning the need for collaborating internationally to address health issues and certainly, never more so than this past year. Educating physicians and clinicians on the concerns that have arisen for the security of our intellectual capital and research takes a tailored approach. This session will delve into the approach taken by two university academic centers and will provide an interactive forum for answering questions from the clinical research administration community.
Global Warming: Combatting the Chilling Effect of Foreign Influence Compliance
Susan Sedwick, Courtney Swaney, and Kim Melville-Smith
March 25, 2021, 3:45p – 5:00p
One needs only to peruse the annual list of Nobel Prize winners in the scientific fields to understand the importance of international collaboration in science. Unfortunately, fear over concerns about foreign influence have had a chilling effect on international collaborations. I will assemble a panel of senior level research administrators who have moved beyond compliance and back to our equally important role of facilitating research as we support and help make research happen.
Interested in connecting directly with our experts? Email [email protected].
https://attainpartners.com/wp-content/uploads/Attain-Blog-Considerations-for-Focusing-on-the-FA-Future-Part-2@2x.jpg10001540Olivia PychaOlivia Pycha2021-03-11 22:14:142023-03-14 13:11:51Attain Partners at NCURA FRA/PRA
COVID-19, campus shutdowns, shrinking budgets, and F&A rate extensions require that administrators consider the investment in research and impact on future years’ F&A rates. More than ever before colleges and universities are planning for the next rate proposal and examine techniques to identify and optimize cost allocation to benefitting activities. For example, many institutions took advantage of the opportunity to defer F&A proposals based on FY20 until FY21. In this four-part blog series, we examine the considerations of four important initiatives including: a diagnostic review to improve costing processes via a dry run exercise; the benefits of proper utility metering; updating capital asset depreciation expense; and the evolution of the library infrastructure.
Part 3: Fixed Asset Depreciation Reporting Exigency
How is your institution keeping pace so that it is prepared for quarterly and annual financial reporting and the upcoming FY21 or FY22 base year F&A proposal? Fixed asset accounting is a comprehensive process to account for cost expenditures to purchase capital assets, ranging from land and buildings to various types of equipment. While most of the process is routine, we all have adapted with our teams working remotely during this pandemic. However, specific steps to meet federal reporting requirements common to research and healthcare have been interrupted since March.
While certain institutions only fell three months behind, other research institutions will not have their staff back on campus until January 2021, putting them 9 months behind. The information gathered during the inventory, tagging, and reconciliation process feeds management reports, financial reports, and ultimately is required to meet Federal A-133 audit requirements. These required steps include affixing barcode tags to equipment and recording their room location so that management can rely on this information to properly assign depreciation expense to buildings, departments, principal investigators, and projects.
Beyond the regulatory requirements, the institution should consider building construction cost componentization in order to enhance depreciation related to new construction and renovation projects by identifying building, building services, and fixed equipment rather than capitalizing all project costs to one “standard” life. OMB Uniform Guidance indicates that research building components be depreciated on a building-by-building basis, understanding that institutional use varies based on the functional use and type of research activities and the useful lives should be reviewed on a periodic basis.
We suggest beginning equipment inventory and building componentization studies early in the base year to accommodate a potentially longer timeline during the pandemic and the successful integration of the results into the accounting system and F&A proposal planning process.
Note: This article was first published in the January/February Issue of the NCURA magazine. Download the PDF here.
About the Author
Andrew Campbell is a Senior Manager at Attain Partners. He has over 30 years of experience advising clients in fixed asset management and depreciation reporting, building componentization studies, useful life studies, equipment inventory and reconciliation, and asset valuation services.
https://attainpartners.com/wp-content/uploads/Fixed-Asset-Depreciation-Reporting-Exigency.jpg10001540Olivia PychaOlivia Pycha2021-03-08 15:49:472023-03-14 13:15:13Executive Management: Considerations for Focusing on the F&A Future—Part 3: Fixed Asset Depreciation Reporting Exigency
Professional Services firm doubles down on commitment to education, nonprofit, healthcare, and state and local government markets
McLean, VA – March 1, 2021 – Attain, LLC, a leading management, technology, and compliance consulting firm, announced that the company has restructured, separating its operating divisions into two companies. The education, nonprofit, healthcare, and state and local government division will remain privately-owned and will operate under the name Attain Partners. The federal business, which will maintain the name Attain, LLC, was acquired today by Maximus (NYSE: MMS), a leading provider of government services worldwide.
Leveraging deep industry expertise and a consultative approach to business solutions, Attain Partners delivers forward-leaning services that yield exceptional results. The firm serves clients across the public sector, including 100% of the Ivy League, more than 70 of the top 100 U.S. Research Institutions, and nearly 150 of the nation’s largest nonprofit organizations, and has completed more than 900 Salesforce projects.
“We are confident that this new direction is a very positive step forward for our teams,” shared Attain President and COO Manish Agarwal. “The acquisition of the federal practice by Maximus provides a unique opportunity to bring further innovation at scale for our clients in the federal market and growth opportunities for our people. The transaction also will infuse Attain Partners with the funding to make strategic investments that significantly increase its services and solutions across the education, nonprofit, healthcare, and state and local government landscapes,” he said.
“I am excited to accelerate the growth of the Attain Partners business by providing investment capacity to realize the vision of building a next generation, asset-powered consultancy and enabling us to attract top talent, innovate market-leading solutions, and make strategic acquisitions,” said Greg Baroni, Attain Partners Chairman and CEO, and founder of Attain, LLC.
About Attain Partners
Based in McLean, Va., Attain Partners is a leading management, technology, and compliance consulting firm delivering services and solutions to advance client missions across the education, nonprofit, healthcare, and state and local government landscapes. For more information, please visit attainpartners.com.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Media Contact: Ellen Walsh, Attain Partners 703.857.2178 | [email protected]
Many large Higher Education institutions have invested a lot of time and money into Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solutions, and yet so many are not satisfied with the value their system delivers.
If your organization completed a cloud ERP implementation in the past several years, you may be asking some of the following questions:
Why are the financial reports generated from PC-based tools such as Excel and Access? Is the data in the cloud incomplete or not summarized correctly?
What is the cause of the aged receivables balance increasing and the significant balance of unapplied and unidentified cash?
Why are project managers not addressing project overspending more quickly?
Why does staff cling to old programs and processes rather than working in the cloud?
If these questions sound all too familiar, there are three things you can do.
1. Survey the managers and administrators in the field to solicit honest feedback on their cloud experience. For example:
Do they trust the integrity of the data?
Is reporting in the cloud:
Complete
At the correct summary or detail level
Timely
Are approvals managed in the cloud?
Are work tasks and deadlines managed in the cloud?
Is processing and information spread out between too many navigation points/pages?
Are staff creating and changing data in the cloud based on rote instructions instead of an intuitive understanding of the system?
2. From the feedback observations create two lists:
Quick Hits – easy to fix items such as:
Modifying setup items
Addition or modification of workflows and task management features
Existing functionality to improve data integrity (e.g., setup defaults and templates)
Prioritized Pain Points with related return on investment
Missing, incorrectly summarized or untimely reporting data
Easy to access relevant training and on-line help
Task streamlining via application tools
3. Assess if in-house resources (time and knowledge) can design and implement solutions
Are setups clearly documented and understood?
Will IT staff need to be trained on reporting and application development tools?
Is training available and relevant?
If you need further assistance, Attain Partners has developed two Oracle offerings which will close the gap between original expectations and your current ERP experience.
ENHANCED USER EXPERIENCE
Identify high impact business flows for improvement
Guide deployment of underutilized Oracle tools
Provide detailed instructions for the setup and maintenance of Oracle tools
HEALTH CHECK
Identify setup and feature usage changes to improve reporting, invoicing, and task completion
Identify data patterns to:
Reduce list of values (LOV’s) to only those items needed
Reduce direct inputs by default of data via setup configurations
We’re ready to hear about your challenges and help you navigate a path forward. To start the dialog please contact us directly at [email protected].
Debbie Pegram is a Senior Specialist with Attain Partners with over 25 years of experience serving customers before, during, and after ERP implementations. After carefully listening to understand clients’ challenges, she engages every available resource to deliver a solution. Her experience spans from implementing new financial systems and building data warehouses at Walt Disney World to being a part of both Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) and cloud ERP implementations for large municipalities, prestigious universities, and international entities such as the United Nations.
https://attainpartners.com/wp-content/uploads/[email protected]10001540JosueJosue2021-02-22 20:45:342021-08-20 02:25:26Transforming the Oracle Cloud Application User Experience
