Welcome

The Michigan State University Board of Trustees authorized the MSU Enterprise Business Systems Project on October 20, 2006. It directed the project to replace and upgrade the existing financial, research administration and human resource systems. The overall goal is to design an updated set of electronic administrative tools that can be used by faculty and staff to accomplish the business goals of Michigan State University. These tools provide an environment to support the work of an advancing university.

Project Bits - SEPTEMBER 2008

PROJECT ADMINISTRATION

• Implementation Partner contracts have been signed with Exeter for the HR/Payroll area, and with IBM for Finance, EIS, BI, and Change Management.
• Twenty-three consultants have now arrived at EBSP to begin work in our various teams.
• Tiffany Cleaver has begun work as our Project Manager and has met with all the team leads.
• SAP held three different types of training last month, and all teams were represented well.

• IBM consultants Alistair Ross, Orlando Daniels and Stephen Willetts have arrived on the project and have begun working with the team on implementation.
• Preliminary work for negotiations for a business intelligence solution is underway. These negotiations will be pursued more aggressively now that all of the implementation partner negotiations have been finalized.
• In order to start becoming familiar with the new SAP application, all team members attended one of the SAP classes offered last month.

• Two of our IBM consultants, Kris and Susan, have arrived and are working with all team members to prepare our project strategy and plan.
• Most team members attended the SAP two-day overview to gain initial familiarity with the new application.
• Our group held several strategic planning sessions to review our communications process, change management initiatives, and training plan.
• Our team was well represented at a recent SharePoint instructional session, which will help us begin to utilize this file sharing application.
• All team members met in various configurations to begin working with our IBM consultants.

• We are continuing our search for both a Director and an Assistant Director for EIS.
• Work is continuing on developing the Organization of Interest model.
• We are working with our consultant to develop our Project Plan.
• Our group is preparing a presentation for various campus groups regarding the proposed Organization of Interest strategy for MSU.
• Data Matrix definitions are now on the web and will be accessible by anyone on campus using the Sentinel security group.

• A second Kuali Financial Systems informational session was held August 14 for a campus audience of approximately 250 people at Kellogg Center. Additional sessions and outreach efforts will be announced soon.
• Work continues on the development and testing of KFS release 3 expected out in early 2009.
• The Finance Team, in concert with EIS, has embarked on a three-month plan to vet the EBSP planned usage for organization structure and related codes, and the detail of the accounting string to be used in financial transactions. The planned completion of this process is November 2008.
• Like other teams, we have added implementation consultants this past month. Our partnership with them will last through the implementation dates of the EBSP systems.

• The HR/Payroll Team attended forty hours of SAP training delivered on site in August. A second offering will be held in September for the remainder of the team.
• A few lead implementation consulting partners from Exeter arrived on site and have already begun work on a project plan, held a concurrent employment workshop and arranged calls to be held with other SAP universities to discuss concurrent employment and eRecruiting.
• The HR/Payroll Team continues to prepare for the SAP Human Capital Management (HCM) business blueprint process that will begin later this calendar year by researching and documenting current practices, related regulations, and potential policy and practice changes.

• Kuali Coeus Research Administration (KCRA) Release 1.1 is in development with MSU as the lead institution in defining the features and enhancements. Release 1.1 is scheduled for November, 2008 and is the first release that MSU will evaluate for potential implementation.
• A face-to-face planning meeting of KCRA module lead SMEs will be held in Ithaca, NY in mid-September. They will refine the plan for Release 2.0 of KCRA.
• MSU is actively involved with partner institutions in the definition, review, and approval of the functional specifications of Release 2.0, as well as system glossary items for new modules in this release, and requested enhancement evaluations to the base functionality previously included in Release 1.0.
• Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) continue work on the Award module, and the Conflict of Interest SME team is working on a generic questionnaire module.
• The Human Participants Institutional Research Board (IRB) team is reviewing recently written specifications and is also starting a review process with the developers.
• The Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) module is scheduled for Kuali Coeus Release 3.0. The specifications for this module are being jointly written by both Kuali and Coeus SMEs.
• MSU has begun discussions about semester effort reporting (SER). The discussions are currently focusing on needed functionality and possible off-the-shelf solutions. SER is relevant to both KCRA and KFS.
• Kuali Days VII, November 18-19, will cover all of the Kuali products – finance, middleware, research, and student. There will be a full KCRA track with a number of key MSU presenters participating.

• We have a new team member on board, who will be our team lead for development and implementation of Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence. We continue interviewing to fill other positions.
• Team members attended SAP hands-on training courses covering an overview of the SAP Human Capital Management system and an introductory course to gain hands-on experience using the SAP NetWeaver Application Server.
• The HR Tech Planning Workgroup is performing personnel administration and payroll functions using the SAP best practice scenarios and the sandbox environment. Remaining scenarios include self-service functions and are scheduled for completion in early September.
• Negotiations with Bearing Point, the technical area implementation partner, were completed on August 25th. The team made final preparations for their on-site arrival.
• Finance area team members met with a consultant to gain knowledge of KFS implementation strategies.
• KC (Kuali Coeus) release 1.0 for Research Administration was officially released on July 31 and is being installed in a development environment.
• Migration of the KFS application from the sandbox environment to a development and test environment is complete. These environments will be used to prepare this application for implementation.
• Mapping of data elements from legacy finance applications to KFS continues.
• Our team continues to provide support for tasks related to security, budget system, project web site, and conversions and interfaces.
• Participation in both KFS and KC development with the Kuali Foundation continues.

The Enterprise Business Systems Projects believes that the faculty and staff of Michigan State University play a crucial role in the projects. We move forward and succeed together. Faculty and staff will have opportunities to help shape the future business systems of the university by participating in a variety of discussions and presentations. As the projects unfold, sessions on data, business intelligence, accounting, enterprise information stewardship and human resources applications will be held. Watch the project web site ebsp@msu.edu for upcoming events or send an email to watersd@msu.edu and we will place you on a mailing list.