7 Benefits of Automating NCAA and EADA Reporting

For university athletics departments, NCAA and EADA reporting is an essential but often daunting task. The process is typically manual, time consuming and labor intensive. As a result, it can pull staff away from other crucial responsibilities for weeks on end.

Picture this: You’re the finance director in the business office of your university’s athletics department. Every year, you manually compile, cross-reference and format financial data to satisfy your NCAA and EADA reporting obligations. It’s a six-week marathon of spreadsheets, late nights and high stress. By the time your team is finished and the reports are submitted, you’re all so exhausted that you can barely bring yourselves to look at it.

In this scenario, do you think your department will benefit from the insights revealed in the reports? Unlikely.
Now, picture an alternative: Your team has access to a cutting-edge reporting automation solution like ARENA by James Moore. What once took weeks now takes days, leaving your team with ample time to review the report and leverage its insights to help your teams win and your athletics program grow.

In this article, we’ll explore seven of the most notable benefits of automating your NCAA and EADA reporting.

Benefit 1: Saving Time and Boosting Efficiency

One of automation’s primary advantages is a dramatic improvement in efficiency. An automated system can rapidly gather, process and present financial information with very little manual effort. With such technology, athletics departments previously mired in weeks of data entry can now generate high-quality reports in a fraction of the time.

Imagine being able to reallocate those weeks of staff time from tedious data entry to higher-value activities that drive your university athletics program’s success.

This time savings enables teams to thoroughly review reports, make corrections proactively and reallocate resources to higher-value tasks.

Benefit 2: Improving Cost Effectiveness

The time and effort saved by automation translates directly into cost savings. Minimizing manual data processing significantly reduces overtime hours and staffing needs during peak periods.

For instance, if your team puts in long hours to meet reporting deadlines, that time consumes valuable department resources. Not only do you risk burning out your staff, there’s also the opportunity cost associated with them spending all their time on these tasks, rather than on other higher priority work. Organizations that feel particularly short staffed might even have to hire a temporary grad assistant to help, leading to additional costs.

With automation, this impact can be minimized or even eliminated entirely. Moreover, automated reporting ensures accurate data from the outset, minimizing the need for costly corrective actions later. This is particularly true when it comes to annual audit procedures. Automated reporting can streamline the audit process by enhancing the cross walk from source data to reporting. In some instances, this may lead to reduced audit fees.

Benefit 3: Increasing the Quality of Reporting

Automation enhances the overall quality of NCAA and EADA reports through several key benefits:

• Consistent reporting: Automation ensures that all reports adhere to the same format and standards every time. This consistency is crucial for maintaining compliance and enabling accurate comparative analysis year over year and across departments.
• Scalability: As data volumes grow, automated systems can seamlessly handle increasing workloads without sacrificing speed or accuracy. This scalability ensures reporting quality remains high even as the department expands.
• Enhanced accuracy: By eliminating manual data entry, automation reduces the risk of human error. This ensures the data powering reports is precise and reliable — a solid foundation for informed decision-making.
• Continuous enhancements: Adopting an automation solution like ARENA from James Moore Digital ensures that your team stays ahead of evolving reporting obligations. It automatically incorporates new NCAA reporting requirements and changing regulations, so you never miss an update.

This combination of consistency, scalability, accuracy and continuous enhancements comes together to produce superior reports. And athletics departments can rely on these high-quality reports to guide strategic planning and decision-making to better serve student-athletes.

Benefit 4: Using Resources More Effectively

By alleviating tedious data tasks, automation frees up your finance team’s precious resources. That means the team can shift toward higher-impact work that directly benefits student-athletes and the whole university.

Here are just a few examples:

• In-depth analysis: With time freed up, teams can conduct thorough analyses. For example, a cost savings analysis could reveal opportunities like renegotiating vendor contracts or optimizing expenses.
• Strategic budgeting: With additional time and insights, the finance team can develop budgets carefully aligned with each team’s goals, ensuring that department funds drive maximum impact.
• Collaboration: With less time spent compiling reports, athletics business offices have more bandwidth to collaborate with others in the athletics organization or throughout the university.
• Long-term planning: Proactive financial planning becomes possible to support key departmental initiatives like facility upgrades or new programs.

Because automation reduces the time and effort needed to compile reports, it enables athletics department business teams to optimize their resource allocation. As a result, they can operate as strategic partners with others in the university, elevating the department’s core mission and teams’ performance.

Benefit 5: Staying Compliant More Easily

Compliance with NCAA and EADA regulations is non-negotiable. Automation makes it significantly easier to satisfy these requirements. Automated systems ensure that all reports adhere to the latest regulatory standards.

Additionally, as regulations evolve, automated systems can quickly adapt to incorporate new requirements, to keep departments ahead of changes. This streamlined approach to compliance not only saves time but also provides peace of mind, knowing that all regulatory obligations are met accurately and efficiently.

With an automated system ensuring accurate reporting, violations can be prevented, to avoid damaging repercussions.

Benefit 6: Achieving Greater Financial Insights

Automated reporting can increase your athletics program’s visibility into spending patterns, budget variances and financial trends by comparing financial data year over year. This is useful for budget-to-actuals reporting. However, by building dashboards to monitor profitability trends annually, organizations can also develop a better understanding of their financial performance.

This ability to proactively spot developing trends and optimize resource allocation illustrates the powerful impact of leveraging automated reporting insights. It helps your athletics department operate on the front foot, rather than being reactive to change.

Benefit 7: Gaining Expert Guidance

When you work with an expert team like James Moore Digital to automate NCAA and EADA reporting, you gain access to specialized knowledge and best practices. James Moore’s advisors can provide invaluable advice on optimizing reporting processes, ensuring compliance and leveraging data insights effectively.

This advisory support helps departments stay aligned with industry standards and continuously improve their reporting practices, ultimately enhancing their overall efficiency and effectiveness.

Automate Your NCAA and EADA Reporting with James Moore Digital

Automating NCAA and EADA reporting offers numerous benefits for your athletics program. With cost and resource savings, higher-quality reporting and deeper potential insights, athletics offices can provide more effective support to their teams.

To learn more about how ARENA by James Moore Digital can optimize your reporting and support your athletics program’s growth, contact James Moore Digital today.

All content provided in this article is for informational purposes only. Matters discussed in this article are subject to change. For up-to-date information on this subject please contact a James Moore professional. James Moore will not be held responsible for any claim, loss, damage or inconvenience caused as a result of any information within these pages or any information accessed through this site.