RNN Group achieves first class financial planning with MHR Analytics

The partnership will support the organisation’s finance team to overhaul its financial planning processes and stay ahead of the increasingly pressured further education sector.

Swapping manual spreadsheets for an IBM Financial Workforce Planning system, the team plans to slash administration time and improve overall financial performance.

Like many further and higher education organisations, RNN Group has struggled to tackle rising operational and workforce costs against a backdrop of reduced funding and tighter budgets.

The team were dealing with more complex workloads and needed clearer visibility in areas like resourcing, recruitment, payroll budgets, maternity pay and starters and leavers.

A spreadsheet-based system meant all analysis had to be conducted manually using Excel, extracting and pooling data from HR and payroll systems. This process required significant time and money, draining resources and failing to provide necessary detail and accuracy, delaying decision-making by several weeks.

With the help of MHR Analytics, the finance team will deploy Financial Workforce Planning, operating alongside the college’s existing MHR iTrent payroll system.

The new technology will enable HR and finance teams to take a monthly snapshot of payroll and completely automate the monthly data extraction and consolidation process, improving accuracy and eradicating errors. It will also allow the organisation to reduce workforce costs and plan for fluctuations in the workforce and legislative changes.

Kate Noble, RNN Group Financial Director comments:

“Gaining critical insights into financial forecasts and staff resourcing is vital for driving our operational efficiency and delivering high quality education to our students.”

“It became clear our existing system was inefficient and was struggling to deliver the visibility we needed. The new system implemented by MHR Analytics brings together our HR and finance functions, giving us a clear view into the future, allowing us to plan ahead efficiently and provide management information more easily. This improved efficiency and value for money allows the organisation to focus on what it does best and continue to provide students with an outstanding education experience.”

Nick Felton, SVP, MHR Analytics comments:

“As a leading education and training provider, RNN Group needed to improve its financial planning processes to drive better decision-making and provide clear forecasts. By taking a proactive approach to overcome these challenges, the group can make accurate decisions based on a wealth of data, saving substantial amounts of time and money.”

About MHR Analytics: A specialist provider of business intelligence, analytics and financial performance management. The MHR Analytics team enables businesses to capitalise on the data available to them, to identify opportunities and prepare for the future – whatever stage of the data journey they are on.

With an end-to end-suite of quality solutions from IBM, SAP, Tagetik and other software providers, MHR Analytics supports customers to go beyond intuition and act based on real evidence.

The growing business has been established for 10 years and has a presence in eight countries and more than 20 different private and public sectors, with a proven track record of over 750 successful implementations. Customers include Admiral Group, Rotherham Metropolitan Borough Council, Edinburgh Napier University and Loughborough University.