Organizational Alignment in Duke Finance

Timothy W. Walsh, Vice President of Finance, announced several important organizational changes within Duke Finance.  

These changes are designed to enhance the alignment and effectiveness of our resources, and to thereby increase the service and value that we are able to collectively provide to our customers throughout Duke.  These changes are effective October 1, 2011.  

1. A new Accounts Receivable function will be established, reporting to Treasury and Cash Management and overseen by Tori Nevois.  Staff within this new function will partner with decentralized and programmatic owners of receivables throughout the University (note: not DUHS), including sponsored programs, DCRI, research-intensive departments in the schools, development, various auxiliaries, etc., to support and promote the efficient and effective collection of monies due to Duke. New technologies are in development to enable the success of this new model.  

2. Our Financial Training resources will be organizationally aligned for the first time, within a consolidated department overseen by Robin Miller.  The expanded function, which will include the staff on our SAP training team, will enable the optimal use of our total training capacity relative to SAP and financial processes and all related courses and curriculum.  This new department will partner with the leaders of our RCC programs on many fronts including the coordination of training capacity, curriculum, classes, and program administration.  

3. A variety of cash handling responsibilities, including those related to the petty cash program and a variety of our auxiliary units, are transitioning to University Cashiering (within Treasury).  We plan to migrate more cash handling responsibilities to Treasury over time, to enhance our overall efficiency and strengthen related internal controls.  

4. The responsibilities and Team in Employee Travel and Reimbursement (ETR) will transition from Treasury to Disbursement Services, reporting directly to Robin Miller and creating alignment across all disbursement functions of Duke for the first time in recent history.  This new alignment will enable the provision of consistent communication, training, and service models across Disbursement units for our customers throughout Duke (including DUHS).  The aligned Disbursements function will continue to partner very closely with Jane Pleasants and our Team in Procurement Services to promote business best practices in the procure-to-pay cycle for all of our customers throughout the University and Health System.

   The Compliance Specialists within the Corporate Card function will continue to be organizationally and operationally linked to Treasury for the short-term.  Once the implementation of new SAP Corporate Card functionality is complete, the Compliance Specialists and the Corporate Card responsibilities related to our internal customers will also formally join the Disbursements function.  The remainder of the Corporate Card staff and the responsibilities related to external parties - primarily banks and other program partners - will remain aligned with Treasury as the owner of all the University's banking relationships.  

5. Our Benefits Accounting team and the related responsibilities will transition from Corporate Tax to Corporate Payroll (within Disbursement Services).  This new organizational model, which will be further enabled by technologies planned for implementation soon, will enable us to leverage the tremendous overlaps between the core responsibilities of Benefits Accounting and Payroll, and support the optimal efficiency of the new Benefits Accounting processes.  

6. Accounting Services and Accounting Systems and Procedures, both of which report to Rachel Satterfield, will be combined under a single director.  This combination will take advantage of the overlapping responsibilities of the two functions, both of which focus on ensuring the accuracy of the SAP general ledger at all times and promoting the optimal use of SAP across Duke.