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Project FRESH E-News - March 2001

Welcome to the latest edition of E-News, the Project FRESH electronic newsletter! E-News brings you the latest information on Project FRESH, USNH's Finance and Human Resources System Replacement project. From now on this newsletter will be published on a monthly basis (no later than the 15th of each month). Project FRESH @ USNH is the web site that complements this newsletter.

If you have questions on any of the information in this newsletter or about Project FRESH in general, please contact Diane Cotter, Project Director, via e-mail at diane.cotter@unh.edu. If you prefer not to receive E-News, follow the unsubscribe instructions located at the bottom of this message.

Project FRESH is moving ahead and is on track to meet its targeted implementation dates of January 1, 2002 for Finance and July 1, 2002 for Human Resources. Over the last few months the project teams have been analyzing and testing the SCT Banner software to determine how USNH's Financial and HR processes will be implemented in the new application. As these processes are refined, the project teams will share proposed processes with the USNH community at various meetings and forums.

On February 7th, Finance's Buy/Pay process group presented a demonstration of the Requisition to Invoice process at the UNH BSC Manager's Meeting. During the presentation the process group showed the Banner purchasing screens and answered many questions from the audience.

New Leader of Project FRESH End User Training Initiative

Carol Powers, HR team leader, has added the coordination of end user training to her duties. The Executive Steering Committee was pleased that Carol expressed an interest in this work and enthusiastically endorsed her taking on these extra duties. She'll be working with staff from all campuses to plan the training for all users. A planning meeting, building upon the strong work done by Jackie Snow, was held on February 8th. UNH HR and CIS had representatives at the meeting and a draft of CIS's recommended format for documentation was shared. Training for USNH end users will take place approximately 6 - 8 weeks before each go-live date. More information about end user training will become available as the project work continues.

In the SCT/USNH Banner software license agreement and contract, SCT agreed to provide USNH with several modifications. These modifications include - Reporting Attributes, a PCARD system, a Grants Interface, an Interface to a Human Resources Module for Salary Increases, as well as a method to provide for Indirect Cost Encumbrances. Status updates for each modification are included below:

Reporting Attributes:  This baseline modification, which will provide for greater reporting flexibility, was delivered on schedule to USNH.

PCARD System:  This modification will allow the P-Card information we receive from our P-Card processing bank to interface with the Banner finance modules. We have expectations that this will work in a similar nature as what's in HUM today. SCT is putting the final touches on the functional specification this week and has already begun work on the technical spec. The P-Card interface will be delivered prior to the Finance go live date. USNH anticipates this interface will be incorporated into the baseline Banner Finance product during 2002 .

Grants Interface:  This interface will allow relevant grant information from a proposal preparation and pre-award system to automatically update required data in the SCT Banner Research Accounting Module. USNH has chosen the InfoEd application to provide web-based proposal and pre-award functionality. SCT and USNH have written the functional specification for this mod. SCT is now writing the technical specification and plans to have it to USNH for review by the finance team later this month . SCT plans to deliver the product in mid-April and add this enhancement to Banner finance baseline during 2002.

Indirect Cost Encumbrances:  USNH has worked with SCT to write a functional specification for this modification. This modification will generate encumbrances for indirect costs based upon encumbrances recorded for purchases, labor costs and other transactions; relieve indirect cost encumbrances upon processing actual expenses for these assessments and update all relevant tables and views. USNH has asked SCT to review this spec for suitability to adding to the Banner finance baseline product and is waiting for the review process to be completed. SCT should respond to the suitability question by early March.

Interface to a Human Resources Module for Salary Increases:  USNH and SCT have agreed upon several core components for this modification, but additional discussions are in process to determine subsequent functionality.

Modification to Insurance Processing:  In the original contract, SCT agreed to modify a component of the web-based Benefits Enrollment functionality to better meet USNH needs. Since then, it has been determined that the existing Banner functionality will meet USNH's needs in this area. In lieu of the original modification, USNH has asked SCT to provide a modification to Banner's Insurance Processing functionality. USNH and SCT are currently working on functional specifications for this modification.

The Finance Team has been working diligently with many of you at each of the campuses to complete the CUFS to Banner crosswalk. This crosswalk maps out the relationships from the CUFS funds, areas, orgs, etc. to the new Banner chart of account elements. This crosswalk is instrumental in the Finance implementation and integral to the conversion of CUFS data into the Banner application. Congratulations to the Finance team and all of the users who have provided valuable time and input into this process.

In concert with the crosswalk, a new CUFS account create form will be in use beginning March 1, 2001. The new account create will support coding future CUFS accounts as well as the Banner related elements. Coding this data as we go will enable the two charts to be more synchronized and minimize additional review prior to go-live.

Finance is in the testing phase for converting five years of summary history from our current CUFS environment into Banner tables and ledgers. When complete, the data conversion will allow summary history to be available to users online in Banner and will also support management reporting needs in the MR2 environment. This is a monumental task and IT and functional folks have been working hard to make it appear seamless. We are estimating that the conversion of actual data will begin this month. There are approximately 2.5 million records, from our existing detail and budget ledgers, that need to be converted and posted into Banner. Due to this large volume, we are working tirelessly to begin as soon as possible so the conversion can be completed well in advance of end user training.

The Finance process groups are also working hard. The Buy/Pay group has been holding full-day meetings each Tuesday to plan out processes, load validation tables, and work through issues to make the Buy/Pay processes work smoothly for USNH staff on go-live. Requisitions, purchase orders and payment vouchers (called invoices in Banner) have been reviewed. Preliminary processes have been drafted and the team is testing these processes.

The Budget/Position Control group has been working on position structures, personnel object codes, budget processes as well as preparing for the next year's budget prep. The Sponsored Programs/Grant Receivables process groups have looked at cost sharing models, grant coding, agency data as well as coding validation tables.

Use of SSN in Banner - The decision made by the project's Executive Steering Committee to use an employee's social security number (SSN) as the Person ID in Banner is going before USNH's ITPAC and FINPAC councils. These councils will review the ESC's recommendation and determine ways to notify USNH employees of the decision, possible ramifications, and options regarding the use of an individual's SSN in Banner. More information on the use of an employee's SSN in Banner is available in the following position paper.

Operating Staff Pay Transition Issue - The implementation of Banner will cause a one-time, one-week delay in the payment of operating staff. Options for reducing the effect on USNH employees have been reviewed by the HR process team and the Chief Campus HR Officers. The proposed solution is to provide impacted employees with the option of a pay transition adjustment to assist them in the transition. The Chief Campus HR Officers will be working with their campuses to communicate the pay transition issue and provide employees with information on how they can manage this one-time event.

The project's management reporting team (MR2) is wrapping up the finance analysis phase. During this phase, the MR2 team analyzed the Banner finance system to determine which underlying data sources need to be incorporated into the Finance reporting environment. The team's assumptions and recommendations will be incorporated into an analysis document that will be reviewed by the Finance process teams. This document will also be made available to the USNH community.

The MR2 team is also beginning the HR analysis phase and will spend the new few months reviewing the Banner HR system to determine which data sources need to be leveraged to support the HR reporting environment and meet USNH's human resources reporting needs.

Dwight Fischer, director of Enterprise Computing, has joined the Project management team. Dwight and Bill Baber are working together to cover the several fronts where IT is providing support to the project. Dwight and Bill talk regularly with IT leaders from the campuses.

To support Project FRESH's goal of web access for the Banner application, the IT team has created a development and demonstration environment for the SCT web applications including Web for employees, Banner's web-enabled forms, and SCT Workflow. These systems have been implemented for testing and evaluation by the project teams.

The hardware for the new systems has been acquired, installed and configured by the Systems group. In addition, the Sys Admin team met their February deadline and has created a pre-production Banner database instance. This instance will be used by the Finance and HR teams during their data conversions.

For more information on the project's IT efforts, please refer to this web site.

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