In the August 1st Update I mentioned that I requested a report on the progress of the Process Improvement Initiative. Since the report's completion several new developments have occurred that should be seen in the context of the report.

 

An Oracle consultant has been on campus since Monday, September 9, reviewing Creighton's HRMS implementation. The initial task is to review the benefits configuration. The assessment presented to the implementation group is that the configuration of the benefit plans is "not too bad". There are some options that may need to be "tweaked" but, overall, the configuration is in good shape.

 

The consultant advised us, however, that the standard "collection rules" provided with the application and that we have tried repeatedly to make work, do not meet Creighton's needs. "Collection rules" are programs that determine when to begin taking a deduction from an employee's check. She has identified twenty collection rules that need to be written. Oracle has arranged for a technical person to be on campus this coming Monday, September 16, to work with our staff and begin programming these rules.

 

The consultant began reviewing the sick and vacation accrual issues. Her comments this morning were that current design and approach for computing accruals appears good, but that she is still trying to understand all the issues.
Information Technology is progressing with the installation of "Family Pack C" to the test instance of the Oracle HRMS. "Family Pack C" is a compilation of all the patches and updates to the HRMS application released from January through August of this year. The goal is to have the installation completed and the application available for testing by Monday, September 16.

 

Oracle consultants will be on campus Monday through Friday of next week.

 

The report on the progress of Creighton's Process Improvement Initiative (PII) is posted below.

September 2002

 

Submitted By
Information Technology
With the assistance of the
Controller's Office

 

Special Report 02-02

 

BACKGROUND
Several recommendations from the Process Redesign Report, released in April 1997, highlighted the need to upgrade administrative applications. In response to these recommendations and at the direction of the University Administration and with the coordination of the Administrative Computing Committee (ACC), an RFP for administrative systems was issued in February of 1998. Eight firms, Oracle Corporation (partnering with Exeter Educational Management Systems), People Soft, Business Systems Resources (BSR), Systems and Technology Corporation (SCT), Buzzeo Inc., University Systems Technology, and JSI FundRaising Systems, Inc. responded to the RFP. The ACC formed evaluation teams in the spring and evaluations were conducted throughout the summer and fall of 1998. After an initial presentation, Buzzeo was eliminated from the review because they did not have an actual product or track record. All other responses were evaluated in detail.

 

In November 1998 the Alumni/Development evaluation team recommended Advance C/S from BSR to the ACC. The recommendation was forwarded to the administration and a contract signed in December. Implementation began the following February.

 

The evaluations of the Student, Human Resources, Payroll, and Finance applications were delayed due to rumors and speculation that Oracle might purchase the Exeter Student System. While this seemed quite reasonable, given that the Exeter product uses the Oracle application architecture and technology stack, Oracle announced the purchase of another student system in December 1998. In late January 1999, Oracle offered Creighton an opportunity to be a development partner for the new Oracle student system. The ACC decided this was not in the best interest of the University and recommended the Oracle/Exeter solution. Contracts with Exeter were completed in April 1999 and with Oracle in May 1999. The Oracle contract included campus licenses for the core Oracle technology products and options for full licenses of the Human Resources/Payroll and Finance applications, to be exercised within two years. Both applications were subsequently licensed.

 

Replacement of the library software was incorporated as part of the PII project due to uncertain vendor support for the PALS system. Six library systems were evaluated during the summer of 1999. The team's recommendation was to implement the UnicornACADEME system and Hyperion Digital Media Archive Subsystem from Sirsi Corporation. The contract was signed in November 1999.

 

IMPLEMENTATION

Alumni/Development
Implementation began in February 1999. In October 1999, the Bio-Data module went into production. The Prospect Management module was brought up the following April and the Gift/Pledge module in October 2000. Overall, the implementation required 18 months. Since October 2000, three major releases of the application have been installed.

 

In the Summer of 2000, the University licensed SmartCall from BSR. SmartCall is the telefundraising and calling system used by Alumni, Development and Admissions. While not funded through the PII project, SmartCall was implemented during this time and interfaced to the Advance C/S application. This added significantly to the overall capabilities of the Alumni/Development system. The system was first used for the Spring 2001 phonathon.

 

Student Systems
Implementation of the Exeter Student Marketing System (SMS) in Undergraduate Admissions began in June 1999. Due to a number of unresolved software problems, the window of time for converting Undergraduate Admissions for the 2000/01 recruiting year was missed. By January 2000 many of these problems were resolved, permitting quick implementation of SMS in the Law School after the Law School's admissions system server crashed. During the Summer of 2000 the SMS module was implemented in the following admissions offices: Undergraduate Admissions, Graduate School, Graduate Business, University College, and the Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Pharmacy and Health Professions.

 

Implementation of the Student Aid System (SAS) began in early 2000. The goal was to be ready for the 2001/02 academic year awards. The major effort was automating financial aid packaging. While automated packaging was completed, the loan processing functionality of SAS was, at the time, completely inadequate and a decision was made to continue with the legacy system. With the major improvements to loan processing made during 2001, SAS went live in February 2002. Over 5,000 award letters were produced by June of 2002.

 

Implementation of the Student Services System (SSS) also began in early 2000. The goal was to have SSS ready by Summer 2001. This was overly optimistic. Conversion of the student course records proved to be unbelievably time consuming, involving, for example, researching old catalogs for correct course titles. Further complications arose when Rice and Kuwait Universities reported serious security and performance problems with the web registration. Exeter responded with a totally redesigned web module, introduced at the 2001 summer conference. With these changes, focus was now on a Summer 2002 go-live date. Over 1.8 million student courses records, going back to Fall 1947, for over 13,000 courses, have been converted.

 

Account conversion for the Student Billing System (SBS) began late in 2000 and by mid-February enough of the test system was configured to begin parallel test. What was thought would be a simple addition to the cashiering system in the Business Office to allow parallel testing, turned into a replacement of the 5-year old DOS based cashiering system. While the testing approach was changed, there are still several unresolved issues.
While the Student Housing System (SHS) was installed, no significant work on the implementation was completed.

 

Libraries
Conversion of the PALS data began in January 2000. Sirsi did the software installation and first test load of data in March of 2000. Testing and validation continued through mid-May. After more than a decade of use, the PALS system was shut down at the end of the Spring 2000 semester. Sirsi completed the final load of over 380,000 bibliographic records into the new library system in mid-June and the system became operational on June 26, 2000.

 

The Reinert Alumni and Health Sciences Libraries each have archiving projects underway using the Hyperion Digital Media software.

 

Oracle Human Resources and Payroll
Oracle Human Resources and Payroll was licensed in February 2000. The Human Resources Management System (HRMS) project got underway in September 2000 when Creighton contracted with KBACE Technologies for implementation support. The first few months were spent documenting the University's business practices and working through possible implementations of these practices in the Oracle HRMS. By January 2001, configuration of a "conference room pilot" was underway and testing began. The time was filled with testing, and reconfigurations, and the application of Oracle patches and new releases. In retrospect, not enough time was dedicated to the configuration and testing of the benefits module. Nor were enough HR and Payroll cycles tested to recognize the problems reported later in this report.

 

The original go-live date was set for July 1, 2001. However, after realizing that the July 1 payroll is part of the prior fiscal year, and wanting to finish the fiscal year in the legacy system, the go-live date was postponed to the beginning of the next quarter, October 1, 2001. Three payrolls were completed within the first 10-days of going live with the Oracle system. Also, the first payrolls were followed, almost immediately, with installation and testing of major mandatory year-end updates.

 

Oracle Financials

Oracle Financials was licensed in February 2001 after careful re-evaluation of available options. To postpone licensing the applications would have more than tripled the cost. No implementation plans are in place at this time.

 

CONTINUING ISSUES

Student Systems
The Exeter Student System was purchased by SCT in January of 2002. This was unexpected, since Sallie Mae Solutions, the former owner, had purchased Exeter just prior to the Summer 2000 conference and given every indication of further development and support.

 

The recent SCT acquisition included continued support for the Exeter 1.5 release and the commitment to complete the Exeter 2.0 (Oracle 11i) release by June 2002. However, product support for both releases was continued only through June 2004. In March SCT hosted a meeting of the Exeter-Oracle clients to discuss the possibility of extending support through June 2007. In the end, so few clients expressed interest that this option was withdrawn. Faced with the prospect of a possible conversion within two years, the Student Systems Steering Committee decided that the implementation should be stopped.

 

As part of the acquisition, SCT offered Exeter clients the option to license either the Banner or Exeter SQL Server (E5) Student Systems at no additional software cost. Clients would be responsible for implementation costs. This option is available through June 2004 to current maintenance customers. E5 is very much a "beta product". With this in mind, the Steering Committee formed a committee to review the SCT Banner Student System and make a recommendation. This review is now underway.

 

Of the other Exeter schools, University of California-Santa Cruz, and Johnson and Wales University, who were just beginning their implementations, reopened their software searches. The Harvard Medical and Design schools are upgrading systems to Exeter 1.5, but did not indicate any additional plans. The California School of Technology plans to migrate to Exeter 2.0 (Oracle 11i) and will maintain the system themselves. Loyola Marymount University Law School has upgraded to Exeter 1.5 and plans to maintain the systems themselves after the SCT support period expires. Rice University is implementing Banner Student and will remain on Exeter 1.3.1 until their target conversion in November 2003.

 

Human Resources and Payroll
There are three notable areas of difficulty with the HRMS application. The first is Oracle Standard Benefits (OSB). For example, OSB does not consistently assign the correct package of benefits to an employee; or it may start and/or end benefits inappropriately and unintentionally; or it will deduct an incorrect premium. These all require manual intervention to correct. These problems are compounded by complex configuration options whose implications are not always clear. It takes considerable time to determine whether any given problem is a configuration issue or a software problem. Arguably these issues should have been found (and many were) and resolved during implementation. However, the first major update to OSB wasn't released until January 2002, well past our go-live date. Additional updates for OSB are in the April and August releases. These most recent releases are currently being installed.

 

The second area is the use of 'multiple assignments'. Employees working in several departments have an assignment for each department to correctly identify the hours worked in each. Employees who, for example, have a faculty appointment as well as an administrative position, will have two assignments to correctly categorize personnel costs. While these work as intended, multiple assignments are causing havoc with sick, vacation, and holiday accruals, particularly as employees switch between monthly and biweekly payroll cycles.

 

The third problem area is the costing of the fringe benefit allocation. While the calculated fringe is correct, the costing for government grants is incomplete, and for special pays, it is charged to the wrong accounts. And now, with the new fiscal year, it does not compute fiscal year-to-date earnings correctly. We are still working with KBACE to fix these problems and have made good progress lately. The University continues to work with KBACE to resolve these issues. KBACE has made several campus visits since October 1 and continues to provide support free of charge.

 

The University has also reached a shared costs agreement with Oracle, in which Oracle will review the implementation and make recommendations for possible configuration changes and provide technical resources as needed. This review will be underway by mid-September.

 

PII Cost Summary
The costs reported below are through June 30, 2002. These do not include University personnel costs or other administrative costs. Costs reported under Information Technology include servers, software, and training shared by multiple applications.

 

ALUMNI/DEVELOPMENT
Software Licenses 266,101
Consulting Services 54,577
Equipment 122,947
Training 33,424
Other 2,393
TOTAL 479,442

 

STUDENT SYSTEMS
Software Licenses 439,000
Consulting Services 457,326
Equipment 38,201
Training 25,716
Other 2,940
TOTAL 963,183

 

LIBRARY SYSTEM
Software Licenses 223,160
Consulting Services 102,850
Equipment 40,048
Training 5,585
Other 814
TOTAL 372,457

 

HUMAN RESOURCES
Software Licenses 378,361
Consulting Services 1,411,558
Equipment 25,049
Training 3,634
Other 5,341
TOTAL 1,823,943

 

FINANCE SYSTEM
Software Licenses 415,416
Consulting Services 0
Equipment 124
Training 0
Other 0
TOTAL 415,540

 

INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Software Licenses 864,329
Consulting Services 4,946
Equipment 690,555
Training 119,528
Other 2,733
TOTAL 1,682,091

 

TOTALS

Software Licenses 2,586,367
Consulting Services 2,031,257
Equipment 916,924
Training 187,887
Other 14,221
TOTAL 5,736,656

John P. Schlegel, S.J.
President