IRIS Project News Release
IRIS Project Update – Finance Team
The IRIS Project’s Finance (FI) Team is wrapping up details for its part of the Business Blueprint phase. Throughout the course of 30 workshops and daily meetings that began in August, team members and their FI consultant counterparts have concentrated their efforts on determining the best ways to meet UK’s business process requirements with the SAP software solutions. The Business Blueprint for the IRIS Project is scheduled for completion by Dec. 17.
In a recent discussion of blueprinting work, Dale Austin, FI lead, responded to questions and shared his thoughts about the process and the challenges presented to his team.
Q. How would you describe the process of blueprinting in Finance?
A.Much of our work has focused on teaching the consultants about UK. They need to know the goals of the institution with regard to its business and financial operations in order to help us build the blueprint for the financial part of the system. The FI Team has developed documentation of business process flows to help the consultants learn about UK requirements.
Q. What areas have you covered?
A.Our workshops and work sessions have been organized around the major areas of Chart of Accounts, Budgeting, Cash Management, Endowment Management, and Grants and Contracts (including project billing and accounts receivables).
Q. What about workshop participation?
A.Our workshop participants have tended to be from targeted groups. We’ve called upon campus experts from each of the major areas. The project has benefited from good participation from key representatives who have helped all of us gain a better understanding of the needs and functions of both the campus and the clinical enterprise.
Q. What has the FI Team found most challenging thus far?
A.Our biggest challenge is the replacement of the present Faculty Effort System. FES affects all faculty members, touching areas such as accounting, human resources, and payroll. We’ve been challenged to determine the best way to record faculty effort in SAP while meeting user needs and institutional reporting requirements in a reasonable manner.
Clinical enterprise reporting has presented another challenge to the team. We are working on the best means for producing financial statements that benefit the enterprise.
A third major challenge we’ve faced involves the College of Agriculture’s land grant accounts which operate on the federal fiscal year rather than the institutional one. We hope to be able to handle these accounts more efficiently in the SAP software and eliminate the college’s duplicative efforts.
Q. What insight can you offer about the software at this point?
A.The terminology is radically different. Everyone on the team has struggled to learn new terms and how they correspond to the UK language.
Far more significant than the terminology, however, is the system integration that SAP features. The blueprinting activity has afforded the FI Team the chance to see the degree of integration on the software. As we’ve learned, decisions made for the FI module can have an impact on other areas of the software, such as Human Resources or Campus Management. Working through those integration issues has taught us firsthand about how an integrated system operates.
Q. What blueprinting work remains for the FI Team?
A.The team is finalizing the documentation of UK’s business processes. We’re also designing how the chart of accounts will look structurally in the new system. Fortunately, the individuals on the team know the business and finance needs and can ensure a solid FI Blueprint document in December.
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IRIS team members Susan Sponcil (College of Agriculture) and John Tripure (College of Medicine) tackle a CI template in a recent Funds Management work session. |
The IRIS Project’s Finance (FI) Team is wrapping up details for its part of the Business Blueprint phase. Throughout the course of 30 workshops and daily meetings that began in August, team members and their FI consultant counterparts have concentrated their efforts on determining the best ways to meet UK’s business process requirements with the SAP software solutions. The Business Blueprint for the IRIS Project is scheduled for completion by Dec. 17.
In a recent discussion of blueprinting work, Dale Austin, FI lead, responded to questions and shared his thoughts about the process and the challenges presented to his team.
Q. How would you describe the process of blueprinting in Finance?
A.Much of our work has focused on teaching the consultants about UK. They need to know the goals of the institution with regard to its business and financial operations in order to help us build the blueprint for the financial part of the system. The FI Team has developed documentation of business process flows to help the consultants learn about UK requirements.
Q. What areas have you covered?
A.Our workshops and work sessions have been organized around the major areas of Chart of Accounts, Budgeting, Cash Management, Endowment Management, and Grants and Contracts (including project billing and accounts receivables).
Q. What about workshop participation?
A.Our workshop participants have tended to be from targeted groups. We’ve called upon campus experts from each of the major areas. The project has benefited from good participation from key representatives who have helped all of us gain a better understanding of the needs and functions of both the campus and the clinical enterprise.
Q. What has the FI Team found most challenging thus far?
A.Our biggest challenge is the replacement of the present Faculty Effort System. FES affects all faculty members, touching areas such as accounting, human resources, and payroll. We’ve been challenged to determine the best way to record faculty effort in SAP while meeting user needs and institutional reporting requirements in a reasonable manner.
Clinical enterprise reporting has presented another challenge to the team. We are working on the best means for producing financial statements that benefit the enterprise.
A third major challenge we’ve faced involves the College of Agriculture’s land grant accounts which operate on the federal fiscal year rather than the institutional one. We hope to be able to handle these accounts more efficiently in the SAP software and eliminate the college’s duplicative efforts.
Q. What insight can you offer about the software at this point?
A.The terminology is radically different. Everyone on the team has struggled to learn new terms and how they correspond to the UK language.
Far more significant than the terminology, however, is the system integration that SAP features. The blueprinting activity has afforded the FI Team the chance to see the degree of integration on the software. As we’ve learned, decisions made for the FI module can have an impact on other areas of the software, such as Human Resources or Campus Management. Working through those integration issues has taught us firsthand about how an integrated system operates.
Q. What blueprinting work remains for the FI Team?
A.The team is finalizing the documentation of UK’s business processes. We’re also designing how the chart of accounts will look structurally in the new system. Fortunately, the individuals on the team know the business and finance needs and can ensure a solid FI Blueprint document in December.
| VOCABULARY TERMS Master Data are created centrally and available to all applications and all authorized users. R/3 is the term that refers to the SAP application providing real-time access to information using a three-tier system architecture. The three components of this architecture are the information database, the transaction application server, and the user desktop. GL Account in SAP is the equivalent of account control, object code and subcode in the present FRS system. GL Account identifies categories of expense, revenue, assets, liabilities, and fund balances. It is a required data element for each transaction. |
