BAP Minutes – February 14, 2007

Today’s speaker was Nate Haynes from the Huron Consulting Group. Nate is currently working on a project here at UAH. Mr. Huron started his career with Arthur Andersen (AA) in 2002. Before AA disintegrated in the midst of the Enron debacle, Nate and a group of fellow employees branched off and started the Huron Group.

Mr. Haynes’ focus is on sponsored projects; He helps universities to manage government projects for grants, projects, etc. UAH, for example, receives about $70 million per year from NASA, the government and others. Nate is currently on assignment here at UAH.

Huron has about 1000 employees and @150 of those are involved with higher education. Depending on the needs of the client, the size of the team will vary. For the current needs of UAH, it is just Nate and one subordinate. He has worked on projects by himself and with groups as large as eight. He once did a 9-10 month stint as the interim director of an Oregon research facility.

Nate is not an accountant – he is more of a financial consultant. Nate said that consulting in general offers much independence, but you must be able to “think on your feet” with confidence.

One big issue (challenge) for universities that Nate deals with is faculty compensation. There are very strict federal rules on how much federal money can be charged for research as part of faculty salaries. Salaries must be declared annually and cannot be changed until the following year. The compliance risk is that salaries be justifiable should the federal auditors show up. Mr. Haynes helps universities to understand and comply with the federal regulations.

Nate’s first challenge here at UAH was to figure out how all the offices that facilitate the research work together, the goal being improvement on the existing model.

In answer to the question, “What do you do?”, Mr. Haynes replied that his job is to make being compliant easy and customer-friendly. He tries to find the best way within a particular culture to disseminate information that will help all involved.

Huron has about 80 ongoing projects. The best employees, in Nate’s opinion, come right out of college. Huron will hire @150 new graduates this year. If you don’t mind being on the road 4-5 days/week, then Huron might be the place for you.

This is a great time to be entering the accounting industry! Nate encouraged the students to find a company with people (especially the managers) who are successful and to whom they can align themselves.

Other areas of business that Huron is involved include the health-care industry, strategic sourcing, mergers and acquisitions, and the legal business consulting practice.

In regard to the health-care industry, Huron works both sides of the street (i.e. hospitals and the insurance companies), assuring that the prior is not underpaid or the latter is not paying too much, depending on who is paying for the services.

Strategic sourcing is simply working with all the vendors of an establishment to save money. For example, a Huron representative might call Dell and hustle a better price on laptops for UAH.

In the Mergers & Acquisitions Department, the bankruptcy of United Airlines is an example of a typical project.

Helping to quantify a litigious situation or determining the value of a patent and providing expert testimony are examples of what is being done in the Legal Business Consulting Practice Department.

One last example of something that Nate has worked on in the past: DukeUniversity bought a RaleighHospital that had $33 million of unpaid insurance claims. What they did was to hire @six temps to call the insurance companies about all the unpaid claims and literally hound them until they decided to pay. Nate called this activity “cash acceleration” and it worked because in a short time they had recovered @$25/33 million.

If you are an accounting or finance major and are interested in working for the Huron Consulting Group, just Google Huron and follow the yellow brick road…

RRB, Reporter, Beta Alpha Psi