Support Strategy

Three years post-Oracle implementation, there has been significant progress made to address system issues, enhance reports, and provide support to department staff. By reflecting on the finance systems stabilization efforts over these past three years, it highlights the successes as well as the remaining issues that still need to be addressed. While optimizing our current processes and systems is a central focus, we understand that department staff need more support and guidance to be fully confident operating in our finance systems and to deliver key financial reports. All our efforts center on the end users' needs by assessing their work processes and identifying opportunities to provide a streamlined experience.

From January to May 2023, the Office of Operational Strategic Initiatives conducted a thorough review of our finance systems directly with end users by monitoring their work processes step by step. While this review found no new major system issues, it captured the remaining opportunities to be addressed as part of the stabilization efforts. 

1. Optimize processes and systems. On-going system refinement and optimization will be prioritized based on the process review recommendations and end user feedback.
   
2. Develop better training. A lot of training content exists, but it is delivered in unhelpful formats or disconnected from the broader financial management framework. Developing comprehensive training for newly hired fiscal staff remains a top priority and will be built using sustainable modules that can be leveraged across the university.
   
3. Document and communicate best practices. Many staff said that they need better guidance on best practices as we optimize our processes and systems. Our focus is on documenting best practices for fiscal management and communicating the best practices to department fiscal staff.

Additionally, we have developed “hypercare” support teams that assist department business office staff and research administrators with system cleanup efforts. These hypercare teams consist of expert-level staff who provide key support to departments that have experienced tremendous turnover recently. The hypercare staff assist with Principal Investigator portfolio reviews and reconciliation needs as well as ensuring all financial reporting needs are met. These teams also provide training on best practices and serve as mentors for new department staff.

Across the university, fiscal staff are building confidence with regular use of the activity hub reports and dashboards. Centrally-developed reports are widely used, and on-going enhancements are based on faculty and staff feedback captured via both focus groups and office hour sessions. Report development progress and priorities can be found on the Report Development Blink page.

Progress Updates

Updates are posted monthly on the Improvements In Progress page, which include resolutions and timelines for resolving the remaining finance system-related issues as well as survey results from the campus community feedback.