Building Financial Resilience in Higher Education

Community and technical colleges are under growing pressure to do more with less — stretching limited budgets across instruction, student services, workforce programs, and daily operations while maintaining audit readiness and financial accountability. Yet most institutions still rely on disconnected systems, manual processes, and reactive reporting that make it difficult to answer a basic question: where is the money going?

This ebook, Building Financial Resilience in Higher Education, presents a four-step plan to help higher education finance, procurement, and AP teams gain control of institutional spending. From improving expense and invoice visibility to aligning resources with student priorities, standardizing purchasing policies, and automating controls before waste occurs, each step is designed to be practical and achievable — with AI playing a supporting role at every stage.

Key findings and takeaways from the asset include:

76% of U.S. higher education CFOs

say expense fraud at their institution is increasing

84% of U.S. higher education CFOs

believe colleagues may be using AI to falsify expenses and receipts

88% of U.S. higher education CFOs

say business travel is very or extremely important to their institution's growth strategy

Download this guide to learn how SAP Concur helps higher education institutions manage expense, invoice, and travel activity with connected data, configurable workflows, and AI-assisted capabilities that support stronger financial decisions.