Recommendation from Benefits Office (Direct Bill)
Coordinating Committee members considered a proposal from the Benefits Office to maintain unfunded retiree information in the Direct Bill system, rather than IRIS-HR/Payroll. Joey Payne and Cynthia Burchell attended the meeting to answer questions and provide an overview of the records maintenance situation as it relates to Medicare challenges.

The committee agreed to support the proposal, making Direct Bill the system of record for benefits administration and billing of the unfunded retiree group.

Review of Campus Management Go Live to Date
David Hardison distributed some Campus Management statistics and shared information on Priority Registration to date. Command Center call volume continues to be low, owing to the presence of CM Team members in the Funkhouser Building and The Graduate School. Overall, registration is going well. Problems with booking rules appear to be the greatest challenge thus far, and they are addressed as they surface. Admission correspondence is current now, with 5,000 Advising Conference letters generated and mailed. Some APEX issues have been identified and an able group is working to address each of them. Plans for support for grading include walk-in centers to help any faculty and staff member with entry.

Don Witt expressed his pleasure with the CM implementation thus far and noted that many of the problems associated with registration tend to be routine problems regardless of the system in use.

Lee Nelson offered his project manager’s perspective. System performance has not been a problem thus far and custom applications for waitlisting and overrides continue to challenge the team.

Plant Maintenance/Materials Management Update
Ben Crutcher distributed a summary sheet on the Plant Maintenance implementation and reported that Bob Wiseman had given approval for the May 7 Go Live. Integration testing is finished and the focus now is on training approximately 350 Facilities employees and loading data.

Ben shared his observations on the strength and promise of the system. With PM the University will progress with its objective of minimizing stock inventory and focusing on just-in-time material ordering. All areas of the institution will benefit from a rich preventive maintenance component, which will be used first by the Hospital. For the first time, deferred maintenance will be tracked.

As part of the PM implementation, Materials Management/Inventory will replace three different current systems. Joe Hines, MM Team lead, gave a progress report on this effort and distributed a handout on the deliverables. Joe noted that the team followed the model implemented at the Hospital in January 2006 as much as possible. Joe reported on the successful materials load into production (materials records have been compiled from the three legacy systems). New price contracts are being loaded as they are established. Bar code scanning will be utilized in this implementation, again benefiting from the Hospital’s experience. Joe concluded his report by explaining how PM work order components would be purchased and staged at locations.

The final area of the Plant Maintenance Go Live report focused on the use of the GUIXT for this implementation. While deemed necessary for PM, GUIXT will not be rolled out to the entire campus.

After hearing from Ben and Joe, the committee endorsed the May 7 Go Live.

Position Budget Control Update
Brent McGilberry gave the group the latest information on Position Budget Control. The blueprint for UK’s own PBC version received sign-off on March 19. The PBC functionality will include salary encumbrance and identification of salary savings.

After visits to Texas State University (where SAP’s PBC is used) and the University of Tennessee (where the institution’s own solution works well with its SAP system), Brent and others recommended that UK build its own solution. UT is sharing code for this development.

Go Live is planned for the next fiscal year start, with testing to occur May 14-June 8.

Reporting Update and Recommendations
Phyllis Nash shared information with the group on recent reporting difficulties and emphasized that reporting has become an institutional issue.

As a follow-up to the Reporting discussion from March, Kathy Crouch presented three recommendations to the group. The recommendations were developed as responses to two questions from the March meeting: Are remaining reports on R.I.C.E. list still valid requests? How should report priorities be established?

Recommendation for reports on the R.I.C.E. list: Any remaining reports not tied to central offices will be reviewed by the area fiscal officers beginning May 1, with feedback on those reports to be given to the IRIS Project by June 30. Central offices will be asked to review report items that remain on the list and submit any revised list items by June 30.

Recommendation for prioritizing report requests from end-users: The IRIS Project will submit lists of new report requests to the area fiscal officers for review and prioritization.

Establishment of priorities when staffing is insufficient for requests: The Coordinating Committee will review and prioritize requests (non-statutory/regulatory) from central offices when the IRIS Project cannot complete all such requests in a timely manner.

The Coordinating Committee discussed each recommendation and gave approval to all three. Kim Wilson qualified the third recommendation by requesting that a decision matrix be employed by the committee when determining priorities.

The Reporting update ended with Kathy Crouch expressing her pleasure in the contributions already made by Janet Baynham, Raleigh Watson, and Ruby Watts during their short time on the BW Team.

The Coordinating Committee meets next on May 8.