Vision

Strategic Allocation of Resources

In order for the university to maximize the value of the administrative functions, people must be relieved of the clerical drudgery imbedded in the current systems and processes and be allowed to focus on high impact, pro-active tasks that will move the university towards it's strategic goals.

Because of the lack of integration and functionality in current systems, administrative processes are inordinately clerical and labor intensive. Excessive effort is spent on manual error checking, error correction, duplicate data entry, reconciling information in redundant systems, and manually collecting, manipulating, and analyzing data.

Project ORION must enable administrative resources to focus on more strategic activities by proving a single integrated database for HR and Student Administration information. The PeopleSoft system will serve as an enabling technology to allow business processes to be re-engineered and extended to the source of data on input and to the consumer of the information on output.

Staff reduction is not an objective of Project Orion; however, excess staff capacity may be identified as part of the process re-engineering effort. In order for the University to achieve it's overall strategic initiatives, these resources must be re-allocated to more strategic activities both within and across functions.

Service Excellence

The higher education environment is becoming more competitive. Students, prospects, faculty, and employees expect much higher levels of service from top tier universities. In order for the University to reach it's goals, it must be able to provide a high level of service excellence to both internal ant external customers.

Even with the talents, dedication, and hard work of the administrative staff, the current systems and processes lack the functionality and flexibility to keep up with changing requirements needed to provide efficient services to students, employees, and the rest of the university community.

By providing a technical basis for process re-engineering, project Orion will allow the University to provide previously unavailable levels of service. Service will be improved through more streamlined processes, better access to more timely and accurate information, and more administrative staff capacity available to focus on valued services vs. clerical activities.

Project Expectations

• Implement base system as delivered in the foundation phase, 1997 - 1999
• Support the Challenge for Excellence and the Undergraduate Quality Initiative
• Re-engineer (and, where appropriate, decentralize) business processes in the enrichment phase, 2000-2002
• Automate business processes through workflow
• Bring project in on time and on budget, but not at the expense of project staff
• Allow University to adapt quickly to changes in university mission
• Enhance management decision-making by improving data quality, accessibility, query-and-report capabilities
• Integrate databases and standardize data
• Simplify business processes by streamlining, eliminating redundancy, and reducing reconciliation of shadow systems
• Resolve Year 2000 issues for "in scope" systems
• Maintain current systems during transition to the new architecture
• Provide better service for transfer students
• Identify realistic resource requirements for units and departments (e.g., new or updated workstations and system-specific training for department end-users)
• Provide appropriate outcomes assessments
• Document system functions and procedures
• Prepare system environment to manage research space, productivity, and equipment
• Begin transition to CAR funding of system requirements
• Use improved system efficiency to permit reallocation of staff to mission-critical effort

Critical Success Factors

Guiding Principles

• Make timely decisions
• Address implementation issues to stakeholders (e.g. faculty, administrators, staff) concurrently, not serially
• Make operational decisions at lowest appropriate level in the organization
• Eliminate duplicate data (e.g, shadow systems) wherever possible
• Challenge current processes with value-added standard
• Avoid temporary reassignment of project resources to other tasks except in emergencies
• Implement system "best practices" wherever possible
• Honor thy scope
• Honor thy Client: serve students/users/customers, not the provider
• Maintain open communication with constituents
• Evaluate shadow systems for potential replacement
• Eliminate turf-tending: the university owns the data, not individuals or departments
• Recognize project milestones
• Ensure appropriate people are present and on-time to project meetings

Overview

Prototype

A detailed prototyping schedule for Human Resources and Student Administration will be available for all Project Orion members.

Deployment

The development task consists of creating data conversions, interfaces, reports and further enhancing and customizing the PeopleSoft Human Resources and Student Administration systems to meet the Universities requirements.

The testing task consists of technical and functional personnel testing the data conversions, interfaces, reports, enhancements and customizations in a controlled manner to ensure that the system is meeting the needs of the University. During the testing, scenarios will be created to ensure the results.

The user procedures task is the creation of user procedures and documenting the data conversions, interfaces, reports, enhancements and customizations that were created during the development task.

The training task is the task to train all functional users in how to use the system. PeopleSoft educational classes will be utilized as well as the user procedures developed during the user procedures task as well as existing PeopleSoft documentation.

Production

Student Administration modules were split amongst themselves to have certain parts live before other parts. This is detailed as Student Records I which is building courses and classes and Financials I which is the setup of Item Type data. The remainder of Student Records and Financials will be completed at a later date according the plan.