SAS® Financial Management Helps NC Museum of Art Plan Growth
Published December 19th, 2008
The NC Museum of Art is improving the strategic use of its financial information with SAS® Financial Management from the leader in business analytics. Using SAS for enterprise planning, budgeting, consolidation and reporting fuels the museum’s growth, including the current 127,000-square-foot expansion for its permanent collection.
The museum’s complex financial environment includes systems for box office ticket sales, fundraising/membership and two point-of-sale units, all distinct businesses. When Chief Deputy Director and Chief Financial Officer Caterri Woodrum arrived in 2005, budgets for 23 cost centers, 100 projects and 60 subprojects were contained in spreadsheets. Individual departmental approaches to budgeting and bottom-up reporting on annual needs resulted in difficulty tracking costs of multiyear projects.
Today, SAS Financial Management enables even non-financially trained staff to do long-range budgeting and planning needed for major art exhibitions. The museum can easily track expenses on multiyear projects and provide board members with up-to-date financials, helping the museum plan strategically.
“SAS speeds the flow of information to decision makers, driving the museum toward a more profitable baseline,” said Ms. Woodrum. “SAS consolidates information from different legal entities into a combined financial statement.” No longer restricted to a bottom-up approach, SAS Financial Management gives Woodrum the flexibility to employ top-down budgeting, allocating budgets by department, so they can manage those dollars directly. “Employees’ being able to quickly see any gap between budgets and actual spending leads to cost savings and better decisions.”
A great plus for the museum is the ease in completing annual audits. “SAS Financial Management contributed to a very successful audit this past year. We had no audit adjustments. No management recommendation points. That’s very unusual, especially for a nonprofit.”
SAS Financial Management is a comprehensive solution for enterprise planning, budgeting, consolidation and reporting. With a proprietary calculation engine and accounting logic coupled with a best-in-class workflow management and control system, this remarkable solution consolidates planning or historical information on demand, ensuring that the latest information is always available for decision makers and regulatory agencies.
About the NC Museum of Art
The North Carolina Museum of Art’s permanent collection spans more than 5,000 years, from ancient Egypt to the present, making the institution one of the premier visual arts museums in the Southeast. The Museum uses its collection to provide educational, aesthetic, intellectual, and cultural experiences for the citizens of North Carolina and beyond. The Museum offers a series of changing national touring exhibitions, classes, lectures, family activities, films, and concerts. For information, visit www.ncartmuseum.org.
About SAS
SAS is the leader in business analytics software and services, and the largest independent vendor in the business intelligence market. With innovative business applications supported by an enterprise intelligence platform, SAS helps customers at 45,000 sites improve performance and deliver value by making better decisions faster. Since 1976 SAS has been giving customers around the world THE POWER TO KNOW®. www.sas.com
