Josh Breeden has had a busy first year as a Staff Accountant
in UVAFinance. A new graduate of James
Madison University, Breeden started in October 2015, diving into his new role,
learning the ropes, and adapting to the culture.
It wasn’t long, however, that he started tackling process
improvement.
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| Josh and the King take a moment to contemplate the past year. |
Breeden’s position in the Comptroller’s office had been
vacant when he arrived. Without
shadowing a predecessor, he found himself free to formulate his own way of
doing the job.
“During my first days on the job, I heard Pat Hogan encourage
employees to ‘not be afraid to fail,’ and I took that as my mentality for my
first year,” says Breeden.
Trial and error was a part of Breeden’s process, and the
results have been successful indeed.
“Josh was a fresh set of eyes,” says Randy Ellis, Associate
Comptroller for Financial Operations and Reporting.
“He’s streamlined numerous accounts receivable and
collection processes, improved documentation of procedures, and launched
training for all billing departments across grounds.”
One of the first things Breeden noticed was that there was a
collections module within Oracle that wasn’t being utilized, which meant the
process was being done by hand, based on reports run from Discoverer. He quickly started working with ISDS
to
implement the module.
“The collections process at UVA requires us to send 3
collection letters and 2 phone calls, per state guidelines,” says Breeden. “It
can be a lot to keep up with if you’re doing it by hand. The collections module makes it easy to store
all of that information and keep track of everything. It’s all right there.”
Because of this improved efficiency, Breeden wasn’t devoting
as much time to aging reports, and he found he could help out around the
department where and when he was needed.
His improvement efforts weren’t contained solely within
UVAFinance, either. Later in the year,
he facilitated a training on policies and procedures for all billing
departments across Grounds.
“During the training session, we bounced new ideas around to
help improve the billing process across Grounds,” says Breeden.
Based on the questions raised in these sessions, Breeden
plans to meet with attendees one on one to further smooth out the billing
process across the University.
Although his efforts have certainly improved processes
within UVAFinance and provided great service to financial partners across
Grounds, Breeden says he can’t take all the credit.
“We have great teamwork,” he says. “Laverne Beasley has been here close to 20 years, and her historical knowledge was the perfect match for my fresh set of
eyes.”
He adds that his leadership team was also receptive to new
ideas, lending their expertise to his ideas and helping him move forward.
“I bounced ideas off of a lot of people,” he says. “That’s how you find better ways of doing
things; that and being open-minded to change, and not stopping at ‘this is how
we’ve always done it.’”
Now that he’s been here a year and has several successes
under his belt, you might wonder what’s next for Breeden.
“I don’t have any plans at the moment,” he laughs. “But we’ll see what happens in the New Year.”
