UDFS – PS FINANCIALS COMMUNICATIONS/TRAINING TEAM MINUTES

October 7, 2002

Introductions: Dee Smith joined us as A & S representative and Al Fanjoy will be working on our webpage.

TASKS ASSIGNED:

If you haven’t identified your top training tier to Peggy yet, please do so.

PeopleSoft Tutorial – do it if you haven’t yet as it is a prerequisite for PS classes

LOGISTICS:

GENERAL MEETING MINUTES:

8.4 is not available for demonstration as we had expected.

Consultant Update

A contract with Crestone is imminent. They are expected to start mid-October. Some of the teams are suspending their meeting schedules to free up time to work with the consultants. We will continue with our schedule until the load picks up.

Consultants will have office space at IT and core offices. They will be providing Query training. The contract will include DBA hours for both the HR upgrade and Financials setup.

Team Web Page:

Dee and Al will work out access logistics.

Web Page Brainstorming:

The following are Peggy’s notes taken in real-time at the meeting on ideas for the web page.

Last revised 10/7/02

Link from Comm Team Page

Draft Pages For the Campus

Secure so only UDFS team members can see it until we’re ready to make it accessible

Intro page: The first page they see:

Answer:

Who What When Where Why? – for PS Financials at UD

NOTE: see U Texas Health Sciences Center Houston

http://tbr.hsc.uth.tmc.edu/fmsweb/faq's.htm

does a good job of this!!!

Where can I go now to get more information on what this is and how it works?

Why?

• Why are we implementing PS Financials at UD?
• More potential for functionality for end users:
• Integrated financial systems instead of separate systems that don’t talk to each other
• More information in one place
• Highlight the Quick wins – e.g. data dumps with labels; “View All” feature; customizing your page to show you what you care about (links right to data you need regularly etc.), process scheduler sending info straight to who needs it, other cool features
• More useful chart-of-accounts/more meaning
• Technological advances (can we say this) – current system 30 years old – this is the state-of-the-art system – others moving to this.
• Making this change gives us opportunity to step back and learn from best practices - not doing things “because we’ve always done it that way” – also look at financial capabilities in our units – who needs to know how to do what?
• Technological environment Needed change (WHY??) system consistent with what IT wants to support (don’t say it this way)
• End users have advanced – need more data at their fingertips – decentralization brings needs for more sophisticated tools (ad hoc reporting etc.)
• This needs to be an executive team-approved statement

Who?

• Who is being affected – everyone who is doing JVs; everyone who uses financial information
• Note that there is a communications team that will address questions; who is their contact to learn more
• Point to all the teams/directory

What?

• What is PS Financials? (This too needs to be exec-team approved statement)
• This isn’t HR. Link to HR page.
• What’s included/what will be implemented/phases/what modules.
• What does this mean to you
• What training is available
• Link to useful explanations of what PS Financials will look like e.g. chart of accounts and crosswalk
• What about this is different from HR (and why won’t there be the same problems) (must discuss w/ HR how we present this – don’t want to “slam” HR)
• Data is ‘simpler’ – once data is in, it is in (think of transactions table) – not the complexity; still follow basic rules of accounting
• Journal generator GREATLY simplifies getting data in and out of PS Financials
• Links to job aids and tips

When?

• Training timeline
• Implementation timeline/project plan (esp. when the old system is “turned off”)

How?

• How is UD going to implement it? E.g. project plan/use of consultants/use of internal teams/getting feedback (ongoing as well as what has been done)
• This web-site

• How they will learn to use it? How will I get trained
• Job aids

• How do I do what I need to do in my job – process transactions and view/reporting
• To get the most out of this system, units may want to do some process reengineering (“this capability means that you could do this sort of thing”)

Leftovers

• The dirty truth
• What won’t be better/what may be harder etc.
• UD Check etc.

Where do I want to go from here?

• Assess the level of info they want – what do you want to learn more about?
• I want to get in and play at a high level: Where can I get into PS and touch it and figure out what my questions are?
• I want to see exactly how to do something I do now – how to do a JV
• I want to know how to get the info I used to get off of MVS?
• I want to learn more about the chart of accounts/how the account code is going to change?

*****

(later level)

Cross Walk (converts old account codes to PS chartfields and vice versa)

Tentative Timeline