The Last Link in the Chain: Addressing Integration Issues Associated with Enterprise Financial Systems

Eric Stine, Vice President Joshua Andrews, Technical Architect Phil Cifarelli, Chief Financial Officer Exeter Group, Inc.

KUALI Days VI Agenda 1 Understand the Business Need

What is the end users’ expectation of the new system? General Ledger?

2 Does the Chart of Accounts design support the need ?

Is the information needed to manage the financial responsibilities of the institution represented at the appropriate level of detail

3 Understand the stakeholders and roles that are needed to make the system implementation successful

Who does what and when?

2

KUALI Days VI COMMON INTEGRATION CONSIDERATIONS

     Phased Implementations Change Management  Interfaces  Instances Authentication Reporting Multi-System, Load, and Integration Testing

KUALI Days VI SYSTEMS FOR AN IMPLEMENTATION

GENERAL Other Infrastructure EXTERNAL/ LEGACY E-Mail Systems Student Machines Administrative Machines IMPLEMENTATION HR System Student System Change Control (SVN, Perforce, VSS, Sharepoint) Implementation Website Reporting/Data Warehouse Misc. Systems (Parking, ID Cards, Food Services, etc.) Interface Systems Authentication (LDAP) “Production”

KUALI Days VI Finance Feeder Systems

  Finance systems touch EVERYTHING. Two kinds of feeder systems/two kinds of interfaces.

Finance data feeds will be in batch – how does this impact reporting and user expectation? Departmental? Managerial?

KFS Data Feeds HR System Tran sacti ons Transactions Misc. Systems (Parking, ID Cards, Food Services, etc.) Tra nsa ctio ns Student System KFS Transformed Data Data Warehousing /Reporting

KUALI Days VI Understand the Business Need

 Fiduciary Reporting and Control - Reporting  Federal, State, Agency  Board of Governance – Trustees etc.

 Third Party – Banks, Foundations, Other Independent Entities  Faculty  Alumnae  Students 6

KUALI Days VI Understand the Business Need - Reporting

 Managerial  Budgetary  Departments  Initiatives  Programs  Schools  Instructional Perspectives 7

KUALI Days VI Understand the Business Need - Reporting

 Timing  Real Time Standard (based on posting at the time of report execution)  Periodic Standard  Real Time Ad Hoc  Delivery Method  Online  Printed Preformatted  Printed Ad Hoc 8

KUALI Days VI Understand the Business Need - Transacting

 Posting and Clearing  How do transactions begun

outside

the financial system post to the ledger?  How – and when - are reservations, pre-encumbrances and full encumbrances created?

 What are the clearing rules? How are commitment items relieved?

 Will you post in real time? 9

KUALI Days VI Understand the Business Need - Transacting

 Procurement  Will you be integrating third party e-procurement tools or marketplaces, such as SciQuest?  How will the requisitions be generated? Approved? Converted to POs?

 How is your strategy impacted when the funding source is a grant? A project?

10

KUALI Days VI Understand the Business Need - Transacting

 Payroll  Do you perform salary or position budgeting?  Do you encumber payroll?

 How is your strategy impacted when the funding source is a grant? A project? 11

KUALI Days VI Understand the Business Need - Transacting

 Student receivables  When do you post student receivables to the ledger?  How is your strategy impacted when the funding source is a grant? Aid? Anticipated aid? 12

KUALI Days VI Understand the Business Need - Transacting

 Other business processes:  Parking,      Dining, Library, Housing, Pre-Award Sponsored Programs Endowment  What are the feeder systems? Are they documented?

 Is the integration uni-directional? Bi-directional?

 Do you report solely from the ledger/financial system? From the feeder system? Both? 13

KUALI Days VI Agenda 1 Understand the Business Need

What is the end users expectation of the new system? General Ledger?

2 Does the Chart of Accounts design support the need ?

Is the information needed to manage the financial responsibilities of the institution represented at the appropriate level of detail

3 Understand the stakeholders and roles that are needed to make the system implementation successful

Who does what and when?

14

KUALI Days VI Does the Chart of Accounts design support the need ?

   Organizational View  Institution   Department Line of Business / Activity Accounting View  Account       Cost Center Profit Center Fund Program Grant /Project Functional Area Workflow and Approvals 15

KUALI Days VI Conversion Considerations

   History  Detail  Reporting Needs Mapping  One to One  One to Many (Not Recommended! Makes reconciliation difficult)  Many to One Data Cleansing  Beware of legacy accommodations  Does the expertise exist to unwind issues   Control   At what level will data be verified Can this process be automated?

Timing 16

KUALI Days VI Conversion Considerations

 How will you go-live?

 Complete history? Balance forward?

 Enterprise-wide? By location, but common functions? By function across all locations?

17

KUALI Days VI Interface Considerations

      Staging Source System Feeds Mapping Table vs. Changing feeder system structures  Often a change to the detail coding block is required, unless you create a crosswalk. Do you make the change in the feeder system so that they can natively create the required accounting transactions or do you create a mapping table to convert the “old COA” to the new?

 At some point you want to make the COA change in the sub system IF it is going to remain indefinitely.

Timing – how frequently will the batch run?

Controls Incorporate into standard business flows Define new business procedures 18

KUALI Days VI Process Considerations

 Will the new system create process changes that require changes to feeder systems? 19

KUALI Days VI Agenda 1 Understand the Business Need

What is the end users expectation of the new system? General Ledger?

2 Does the Chart of Accounts design support the need ?

Is the information needed to manage the financial responsibilities of the institution represented at the appropriate level of detail

3 Understand the stakeholders and roles that are needed to make the system implementation successful

Who does what and when?

20

KUALI Days VI Understand the stakeholders and roles that are needed to make the system implementation successful

 Direct Supporters  VP of Finance, Treasurer, Office of Sponsored Programs     Controllers Accounting Department Heads Principal Investigators Knowledgeable Accounting Staff – Department /Organizational Finance Managers  IT Leadership – Development Resources – Infrastructure Resources  IT Staff – Development Resources – Infrastructure Resources 21

KUALI Days VI Understand the stakeholders and roles that are needed to make the system implementation successful

 Indirect Supporters  Administration  Department Heads  Faculty, Staff , Students  Affiliated Institution Leadership 22

KUALI Days VI Ensure that the users are prepared to run the system.

  Testing strategy  Unit   Integration User Acceptance – what are your standards?

Training of new system processes – what is your training strategy  Reporting  Workflow  Be prepared to provide for the ongoing care and feeding of the system 23

KUALI Days VI Good Habits – Plan a Phase for Requirements and Design

 Document existing feeder systems  Determine which will remain   Identify necessary interfaces and directionality Determine whether to map to or change these systems to support new FI system  Document business processes   Current state at, minimally, a high level Future state in detail  Develop a Comprehensive Reporting Strategy 24

KUALI Days VI Good Habits – Implementation

 Keep It Simple  Control Scope  Go Live in a manner culturally consistent with the institution 25

KUALI Days VI Watch Out For…

 Have you thought about or done?

 Systems monitoring? E.g. Zenoss, Tivoli, etc.

 Upgrading/adding more KNS applications?

– Do you plan to have new apps (such as Grants Management) share the same Oracle instance?

– How will upgrades to production applications be handled?

 Who controls security? Kuali ideally will authenticate off of LDAP, Active Directory, etc.

– KIM in the future

Questions?

KUALI Days VI

27