Company Background

Alta Colleges, Inc., is headquartered in Denver, Colorado and is the parent company to Westwood College and Redstone Institute. The company operates 21 campuses in California, Colorado, Georgia, Illinois, Texas, and Virginia, as well as "Westwood Online." Alta also owns Test Services, Inc., a franchisee of The Princeton Review, offering test preparation services to high school and college students in many markets across the United States.

Project Goals & Objectives

  • Provide a functioning planning and forecasting application with Hyperion tools
  • Create a scalable application that will allow for future growth
  • Enable a more efficient budget process by eliminating the need for the consolidation of multiple (~250) Excel spreadsheets
  • Ensure a higher level of data integrity by using a centralized database rather than multiple spreadsheets
  • Provide a budgeting and forecasting system that can be integrated with source systems (Platinum GL, Class, and, in the future, possibly Oracle and PeopleSoft)
  • Create an application that allows for better analysis of actuals (slicing and dicing, ad-hoc querying, actuals to budget analysis)
  • Ability to import or load key metrics (populations, full-time vs. part-time, etc.)
  • Address current reporting needs using Hyperion Financial Reporting and Hyperion Web Analysis (year-over-year comparisons, Actual vs. Budget comparisons, etc.)

Business Issues

The existing budgeting tool did not allow for the rapid growth Alta was experiencing. Many hours were spent consolidating and validating budget data rather than analyzing and forecasting the data. They needed a system that was scalable, easy to use, and allowed for the slicing and dicing of data.

Software Implemented

  • Hyperion Planning
  • Hyperion Web Analysis
  • Hyperion Financial Reporting

Ranzal Role

In partnership with Hyperion Consulting Services, the Ranzal team successfully designed and implemented Hyperion Planning on-time and within the budget. In addition to developing a budgeting and forecasting tool, Ranzal created a more robust reporting tool that allowed users greater flexibility and control in fulfilling their reporting requirements.

Business Benefits

  • Decrease the time it took to prepare and consolidate the budget
  • More robust reporting
  • End-users can now run their own reporting packages customized to their needs