FP&A Software to Transform Your Institution with
Higher Ed
Strategic Planning
Take a unified approach to financial and strategic goals in Synario.
Take a unified approach to financial and strategic goals in Synario.
Why Strategic Planning Matters for Higher Education
The strategic planning process thrives under data driven leadership—it’s the foundational framework that ensures institutional sustainability and growth. For colleges and universities, aligning strategic and financial plans is the key to staying ahead of challenges while achieving their long-term vision.
Too often, strategic plans and financial realities operate in silos. This disconnect can lead to missed opportunities, inefficient resource allocation, and difficulty adapting to unforeseen changes. Bridge this gap and your institution can drive meaningful, measurable progress toward their goals while keeping a sustainable mindset.
Why Strategic Planning Matters for Higher Education
The strategic planning process thrives under data driven leadership—it’s the foundational framework that ensures institutional sustainability and growth. For colleges and universities, aligning strategic and financial plans is the key to staying ahead of challenges while achieving their long-term vision.
Too often, strategic plans and financial realities operate in silos. This disconnect can lead to missed opportunities, inefficient resource allocation, and difficulty adapting to unforeseen changes. Bridge this gap and your institution can drive meaningful, measurable progress toward their goals while keeping a sustainable mindset.
“We use Synario before we do anything else…"
– Jeff Dewitt, CFO and EVP, University of Kansas
“We use Synario before we do anything else…"
– Jeff Dewitt, CFO and EVP, University of Kansas
Where Synario Excels
Capital Planning and Deferred Maintenance
Comprehensive capital planning at your fingertips, ensure that your capital projects are sustainable, affordable, and funded right.
Data-driven Enrollment and Retention Planning
Plan for different enrollment scenarios at the click of a button, track and measure the impact vs cost of different retention initiatives.
Multi-year Forecasting & Informing Budgets
See a full field view of the future, allowing you to get a more complete picture to form more accurate future budgets.
Workforce Planning
Take your workforce planning to the next level, forecast salaries, retirement and healthcare into the future to ensure operational sustainability.
Where Synario Excels
Capital Planning and Deferred Maintenance
Comprehensive capital planning at your fingertips, ensure that your capital projects are sustainable, affordable, and funded right.
Data-driven Enrollment and Retention Planning
Plan for different enrollment scenarios at the click of a button, track and measure the impact vs cost of different retention initiatives.
Multi-year Forecasting & Informing Budgets
See a full field view of the future, allowing you to get a more complete picture to form more accurate future budgets.
Workforce Planning
Take your workforce planning to the next level, forecast salaries, retirement and healthcare into the future to ensure operational sustainability.
The Core of Higher Ed Strategic Planning
Strategic planning in higher education is more than just setting goals—it’s about creating a cohesive roadmap that connects mission-driven aspirations with actionable strategies. Here are the essential components of an effective higher ed strategic plan:
Vision Alignment
Your strategic plan is rooted in the institution’s core values and mission, ensuring both student success, and institutional priorities. For example, if diversity and inclusion are part of the mission, resource allocation should reflect investments in related initiatives.
Resource Optimization
Synario helps you analyze and project your resource allocation to find a better path to student success. With constrained budgets and increasing costs, strategic planning ensures that every dollar works toward achieving the institution’s objectives. This includes balancing operational costs, faculty salaries, capital projects, and program investments.
Scenario Planning and Agility
Institutions must be prepared to adapt quickly to changes—whether they stem from enrollment fluctuations, shifts in public funding, or broader economic conditions. Strategic planning involves scenario analysis to test potential decisions before implementation, ensuring agility in the face of uncertainty.
Easy Collaboration
Collaboration across departments—from academic leadership to finance teams—is critical to a successful plan. Engaging faculty, staff, students, and external partners ensures buy-in and alignment at all levels.
Synario: The Higher Ed Strategic Planning Solution
Synario’s platform is designed specifically to meet the demands of higher education strategic planning. By integrating financial modeling with strategic goal setting, Synario empowers institutions to:
Test multiple pathways and evaluate the financial and operational implications of each decision into the future. Compare futures and combinations of decisions to see what can be achieved now, while preserving the financial health of your institution.
Break down silos between finance, academics, and operations to foster alignment and shared decision-making. Synario helps enable institutions like Virginia Commonwealth University to enhance their collaborative efforts and create consistency in their knowledge sharing.
With dynamic models, institutions can quickly adjust to new data or changing circumstances, ensuring their plans remain relevant and effective.
From Survive to Thrive
See how Synario quickly became the UCLA leadership’s go-to tool to analyze the financial feasibility of strategic projects and initiatives.
Case Studies: Real Results from Higher Ed Institutions
Endicott College
Synario has transformed the way Endicott College approaches its financial planning. From capital projects to operational decision-making, the platform has provided the flexibility, precision, and support needed to keep the institution on a path to institutional health in service of its students.
Lehigh University
Synario helped uncover a plan that projected a $25 million dollar increase in revenue. With projections from Synario, leadership was not only able to improve Lehigh’s reporting and data analysis, but they were also able to realize a plan that suited the university’s financial needs and would facilitate later growth.
What if it was easier?
Learn how you can overcome higher ed’s biggest challenges like strategic planning, deferred maintenance, and enrollment fluctuations with our free e-book.
Using FP&A Technology to Overcome Higher Ed’s Biggest Challenges
Empowering your team with best-of-breed solutions, and uniting your planning efforts under one platform enables collaboration across departments, and keeps your goals in sight. Start overcoming challenges today.
