PeopleSoft projects set the pace
for "automated workflow" on campus

Sweeping away that clutter of paperwork on your desk are the members of the BITS team: (left to right) Linda Smothers, Charlotte Watson, Alberta Trytten, John Briar (director), and Kathy Urata. BITS works with 27 other people on campus for the PeopleSoft implementation.

by Carolyn Skei

Imagine hiring a new faculty member and completing the related paperwork with hardly a scrap of paper traveling across campus in a mailbag.

Or envision your requisition making its way for approval, office to office, as easily as an e-mail message moves. Then imagine being able to track, on-line, the issuing of the purchase order, the delivery of the merchandise, and the payment of the invoice.

Those are the kinds of visions that John Briar and his staff of five in Business Information Technology Services (commonly called BITS) work toward every day. They are the staff who focus their energies on the "PeopleSoft projects" - projects in which the university has invested some $5 million to date.

Briar, a 1981 Fresno State grad (Information Systems and Decision Sciences) who earned an MBA from UC Berkeley and worked for Chevron for 16 years, came to campus as the project director in April of 1997. At that time the university had conducted a 1995 study of its administrative systems needs and had entered into a 1996 contract with PeopleSoft. Briar is a ready advocate for the chosen programs from PeopleSoft, a Pleasanton, Calif., firm whose sales of client server application systems are expected to reach more than $1 billion this year.

Briar explained that the university is using the PeopleSoft systems in two major areas: Human Resources and Financial Management. While it is early in the process to know the full results, Briar easily uses words like "acceptance" and "success" to describe the processes.

"The technology employed by PeopleSoft is flexible and truly state-of-the-art," Briar said. "And PeopleSoft continues to invest tons of money to make their systems effective." He said that Cal State LA and CSU Northridge had purchased PeopleSoft systems prior to Fresno State's entering into its contract. More than 130 institutions including the University of Michigan and BYU have become PeopleSoft customers for some of the newest systems of student information management.

On the Fresno State campus, "two things have made the change successful," Briar said, "We've had strong executive sponsorship of the projects, coupled with a broad team approach - the people in the trenches making it work."

Each of the systems is being implemented in two phases, and Briar said there will be a final, fifth, phase "at the end, to tie them together." He explained that Phase 1 of the Human Resources project was completed in April, facilitating personnel transactions, hiring, and faculty contracts in six of the eight schools.

On the Financial Management project, "We've been 'live' with Purchasing as of July," Briar said. University staff are using the on-line requisitions in Informed Filler. He acknowledged the impact of the "chart of accounts" on staff, especially staff in central offices, who must learn "hundreds of variations."

But the great benefit, in the end, he said is that "we will be able to seamlessly go back to any piece of financial information." He said that units like the University Farm are already "ingenious" in the use of the tracking systems and that additional systems for general ledger transactions, accounts payable activities and budgeting are coming in October.

Phase 2 of the Human Resources project, expected to be complete by the end of the year, will facilitate recordkeeping connected with things like performance evaluations and student employment. Phase 2 of the Financial Management project will add systems for accounts receivable and asset management by April 1999.

"In the last phase, the infrastructure will be in place and we will realize the elimination of paperwork and achieve automated workflow," Briar said. "Actions will proceed from the secretary to the chair to the dean with methods other than wet signatures." He described the goal for the final phase as "ambitiously, July of 1999."

Briar said that his staff has worked with many other offices on campus and in the CSU system in automating the campus workplace. Examples are their collaboration with Instructional Technology Services and Enrollment Services on the SIMS-R Winframe project and with the CSU's Collaborative Management System in response to Chancellor Charlie Reed's quest to have all campuses running a "suite of software" out of three to five data centers within the next five to seven years.