Success Story
How the University of Arizona Built a Connected, All-Funds Budgeting Process with Tru
Higher Education
What happens when a large, complex institution needs more visibility across every fund, department, and position? This case study explores how the University of Arizona partnered with Tru to build a connected, all-funds budgeting and forecasting process designed for stronger accountability, faster course correction, and long-term financial planning.
Industry
Higher Education
Platform
Anaplan
Use Case
All-Funds Budgeting
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Before Tru: Annual cycles, fragmented tools, limited visibility
The University of Arizona’s budget office was running an annual planning process with rigid performance management software, planning was largely a once-a-year exercise, and visibility into how units were tracking against budget was limited.
Enhancing the software or adjusting processes often meant relying on external consultants, and the existing web interface made it hard for internal staff to configure and extend the solution on their own.
The team began looking for a more intuitive, “user-owned” platform that could support multiyear planning, richer reporting, and a broader set of use cases over time.
“Anaplan was more intuitive and seemed like a better solution for ‘user owned’ build processes. Tru understood our needs, goals and demonstrated the value of Anaplan.”
Why Tru and Anaplan?
To evaluate options, the team built small proof-ofconcepts in multiple enterprise performance management tools. Anaplan emerged as the stronger fit for a planning environment that finance could ultimately evolve and extend.
Tru Partnered with the University of Arizona
Working together, Tru and the University of Arizona implemented an Anaplan-based budgeting and forecasting solution with:
- Data hub capabilities for centralized user management and shared assumptions.
- A Net Tuition Revenue (NTR) and F&A metrics model with inputs by college, delivery platform and degree level.
- All-funds budget development at the organization level by fund and account, covering the current-year forecast, budget year and two out-years.
- Position planning based on the employee and position roster, with flexibility to plan at the individual position level or by grouped position categories.
- Budget governance and reporting that support budget requests, budget transfers and budget packet reports with charts, graphs and user commentary.
- Original budget development and in-year forecasting with college-level targets allocated to organizations, seeding from the all-funds version and quarterly forecasts seeded from previous cycles.
The Results
Visibility across all funds:
A single view of multi-year plans plus granular position and monthly budget detail for every department.
Stronger local accountability:
Units see their budgets clearly and can own staying within targets.
Faster course correction:
Quarterly forecasting and better insight make it easier to spot issues early and adjust.
Balanced budget, actively managed:
The university is not just setting a budget — it is actively managing budget and unit-level finances.
Better budget conversations:
Shared data and budget packet reporting support more informed, constructive discussions with colleges and departments.
What’s Different Now
Day to day, the budgeting team and campus units are working with a more complete, timely view of their finances. The solution provides a connected picture of all funds and allows leaders to zoom from multi-year plans down to individual positions and monthly budgets for every department.
“We have a lot more visibility and local accountability,” Perry shared. “When units start to move toward being outside budget, we have insight into it quickly and course correct… We have a complete picture of all funds and have both multi-year planning level data as well as granular position and monthly budget detailed data for every department on campus.”
The university now actively manages its budget and unit-level finances, rather than just monitoring an annual plan. Throughout the engagement, Tru’s team worked closely with central finance and campus stakeholders to design the models, configure workflows, and roll out new capabilities.
“Overall, working with Tru Consulting has been very positive. I would wholeheartedly recommend Tru as a partner.”