Align your financial operations and mission for a more effective and efficient campus.
Modern colleges and universities are complex organizations with sophisticated operations requiring layered management to effectively operate. Sprawling academic enterprises that operate from the center create inefficiencies that leave individual schools with limited opportunities to invest in strategic growth and innovation or manage cost containment. We help complex institutions understand and plan for a budget model that places financial control closer to the leaders who understand their unit’s economic realities while avoiding the pitfalls that erode trust and break down operations that are key to a thriving institution. Kennedy and Company, now a part of Human Capital, is a recognized leader in RCM model implementation throughout higher education.
A decentralized budget like Responsibility Center Management (RCM) models work best when campus leaders are fully involved and invested in the process. Earning institutional consensus is central to our approach in building and managing an incentive-based budget model on campus. We design and implement incentive-based budget models that give schools real control and accountability while keeping the institutional mission at the center of your operations. Our approach goes beyond implementing responsibility center management budgeting, pairing rigorous model design with a consensus-driven process that earns broad campus support, not just steering-committee sign-off.
Building a budget model for the modern campus requires a campus-wide budget model, built on a comprehensive plan for managing campus-wide operational transformation. Human Capital carefully curates each project to methodically design and implement a budget model that fits the operational realities of your campus based on collaboration and department input. Clear, consistent, and honest communication supports the process each step of the way.
Modern campuses are complex organizations that require a different approach to fulfilling their mission. Limited resources and a shifting landscape create never-before seen challenges. As a result, incentive-based budgeting has become the model of choice for major public flagships, research universities, and large private institutions where scale and operational complexity require a decentralized management strategy. Our strategic modeling process starts with understanding your operations and strategic plan, then collaborating with leadership to build a budget transformation plan to match your unique realities.
Complex modeling implementation requires a strategic approach. Our years of experience implementing budgeting in higher education have proven that a well-implemented RCM model delivers better outcomes for both the institution and the individual colleges and departments empowered by the model. Honest communication and disciplined execution turn RCM modeling conversations into opportunities to address structural governance challenges that are often masked with inefficient centralized models. Our approach to incentive-based budget modeling keeps central tools intact, tracks internal arrangements, forecasts its auxiliaries, and invests in the leaders who run each unit. We help institutions build the governance and operations that pair with modern modeling to deliver results that transform institutions.
A large public university lost its president, provost, CFO, and a founding dean within roughly six months — mid-implementation. Because the Kennedy and Company team had built consensus through broad working groups rather than a handful of executives, internal change agents stepped in to carry the project forward. The model launched on schedule.
