‘Finance is a black box for most people in middle management’

I read the No TU Delft-wide stop on vacancies, local measures instead – Delta article with interest. I applaud that the Executive Board encourages the services and faculties to be highly aware of expenditures. However, I am not confident that TU Delft has the tools (right now) to do this.

Because of this involuntary lack of awareness, I am worried that budget controls will be made at random or imposed on the services with the weakest political voice instead of on low return products & services. Better yet, modernizing systems and automating processes would bring about efficiency gains.

Efficiency gains are the best bet, because they reduce operating costs while automating processes is a win for unions as staff will be retained because it reduces workload. If done well, this would free up personnel to pick up crucial work, like planning, that often gets put off until the last minute. (Proper planning also reduces costs!)

‘There is an incredible lack of data on the value and returns of many efforts’

In my opinion, three critical factors will make it difficult to control expenditures in a rational way:

• Finance is a black box for most people in middle management and below. Middle managers get Excel reports on expenses which do not give them a good picture of how money is spent. There needs to be investment in finance dashboards. This will allow the better management of resources and the taking of value-adding decisions.
• There is an incredible lack of data on the value and returns of many efforts, so that we do not know what products or services give good value. I am very pleased to see that the last two years in the University Corporate Office have seen big leaps in using data in management decisions, and this needs to continue. But we need to start collecting data on services which historically have been left to ‘gut feeling’ as to whether they generate results or not.
• Those below middle management need to be given the tools to look into and be responsible for their own budgets. This does not imply that they get their own budgets, only that they gain insights and inform management on the slice they expend. This is particularly infuriating for non-research project managers. Budget control accounts for one third of a project manager’s job, yet we are not given any tools to do so. There is often a scramble in projects to figure out who spent what, where and why. Thankfully, this need is starting to be heard (at least in the Education and Student Affairs department) and it looks like we are headed in the right direction.

If we want to control expenses, we – at all levels of operations – need to start with being able to see them. As a university we need to change our mindset regarding finance and start trusting the numbers to those who are doing the work. If we continue to act like the costs of running a department are some state secret then, like many secrets, they will get out of control.