Tidemark Introduces Financial Planning for Higher Education

REDWOOD CITY, Calif., June 30, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Tidemark, maker of modern cloud-first business planning and enterprise analytics solutions, today debuted a new Financial Planning for Higher Education app to help colleges and universities better manage growth in a challenging fund raising environment. The new app gives educational institutions the power to bring every stakeholder into the budgeting process and to establish a single platform for planning, budgeting and reporting.

Configured specifically to address the budgeting and forecasting challenges that colleges and universities face, the app delivers flexibility and scalability; infographic-style visualizations of plans and financial data that can be easily understood; and a mobile-first architecture that puts crucial information into the hands of the people who need it -- from deans and administrators to department heads and researchers -- anytime, anywhere.

"For years, finance departments at colleges and universities have slowly and painfully led their institutions through centralized, largely manual planning and reporting cycles using Excel spreadsheets or legacy planning systems designed only for specially trained financial analysts to use," said Tony Rizzo, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer, Tidemark. "In today's environment, these institutions are recognizing a critical need to retool and rethink the way they go about managing, tracking and reporting."

Designed using input from Tidemark's customers in higher education, including Brown University and the University of Miami, the new app delivers a variety of cloud and mobile-first financial planning capabilities, including:

• A unified platform. With Tidemark, schools can use a single, intuitive platform to unify strategic planning, revenue planning, personnel budgeting (by fund, grant, project, etc.), departmental budgeting, capital planning and grant planning.  All processes are integrated, so updates to the capital expenditure plan automatically flow to the strategic plan.
• A collaborative environment. Tidemark enables every stakeholder in the institution to have visibility into the strategic plan and budget, which is crucial for achieving a more accurate budget. They have access to the full context of the data: all conversations, supporting documents and unstructured big data is captured. Faculty and staff can escape Excel and Email Hell and collaborate, model scenarios, approve budgets, provide input and understand how closely their school, department or project is tracking to the budget in real-time within the application.  
• Maximum flexibility and control. The new app allows the Budget Office to monitor strategic planning, budget development, and reporting and analysis, no matter how many faculty and staff participate. Because accurate funding and expense plans are so crucial to success, Tidemark makes it easy to gather multi-year projections of income drivers (including enrollment, tuition and grant funding), expense drivers (such as student aid, capital projects, and debt), and other factors (such as non-discretionary inflationary items and reserve requirements).
• Granular visibility into use and source. Faculty and staff can easily compare scenarios and explain differences and every stakeholder can instantly see funding sources and where they stand against the budget at any time. This allows all participants to validate assumptions, meet deadlines and ensure their spending and activities are in line with the strategic plan.
• Built-in best practices. The Tidemark Financial Planning for Higher Education app makes institutions immediately productive by equipping them with built-in best practices that let them quickly formulate a strategic plan or develop departmental or position budgets. Rather than requiring costly and time-consuming custom build-outs, Tidemark lets users quickly configure processes so they are specific to their institution. And customers of Tidemark's cloud-first platform automatically receive the latest innovations as they are released – no expensive or painful upgrades required.
• Simple, intuitive communication. Tidemark tells the story of the institution with interactive, actionable infographics that are always current and that anyone can understand.  This makes it easier than ever to communicate status and plans to chancellors, deans, administrators, professors, donors, private industry partners and the public.

Tidemark Financial Planning for Higher Education builds on the company's experience with institutions like Brown University, which implemented Tidemark with Workday to replace legacy solutions that had imposed time-intensive, manual processes for budgeting and planning. "Tidemark gives us the functionality, and flexibility to budget in the Workday data model and see the results at all levels of the organization," said Susan Howitt, associate vice president for budget and planning at Brown University.

About Tidemark
Tidemark is a new breed of enterprise performance management (EPM), bringing modern, cloud-first financial and operational business planning and analytics to the enterprise through unique, intuitive apps, enabling organizations to significantly improve decision-making, reduce risk and improve business performance. Tidemark arms every decision maker with access to valuable data, deep analytics capabilities, real-time collaboration, and actionable visualizations on any device, enabling a culture of performance. Leading companies transforming their businesses with Tidemark include Netflix, Chiquita, Hostess Brands, Chuck E. Cheese's, HubSpot, ServiceSource and Brown University. Tidemark is funded by Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Redpoint Ventures, Tenaya Capital, and Silicon Valley Bank. To learn more about Tidemark, please visit www.tidemark.com or follow us on Twitter @TidemarkEPM.

Additional Resources

• Learn how Brown University has transformed its budgeting and planning process.
• Tidemark is transforming businesses with re-imagined enterprise performance management.
• Empower your employees to take action with enterprise analytics apps for the many.
• Manage business, improve performance, and uncover new avenues for profit and growth with Tidemark Spring '14.
• Join the discussion in disrupting legacy enterprise performance management on the Tidemark blog.

SOURCE Tidemark