Friday, August 27, 2004

University of Florida ERP Implementation - Bridges

This post contains a review of the University of Florida Bridges site which contains some useful documentation and training material on the implementation of Enterprise Systems.

The University of Florida has a really good site called "Bridges" which provides documentation and training material relating to the implementation of systems in their organisation.

According to their site: -

UF Bridges is a multi-year project to replace the University’s current computer systems with new Web-based, integrated systems that provide real-time information and improve university business processes. This is known as an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution. The University purchased ERP software from PeopleSoft for its financial, human resources, payroll and student administration functions, and enterprise data warehouse and reporting functions from Cognos (a PeopleSoft partner).

Although the solutions being implemented at this University are not Oracle Applications related I thought the site would be helpful for the following reasons: -

1. It provides some good examples of the type of documentation and training material that should be prepared when implementing Enterprise Systems.
2. The documentation and training material will provide readers with a good understanding of the business processes for each of the functional areas within an organisation (e.g. Finance, HRMS)
3. There are various presentations available that give an idea of the issues that one needs to think about when implementing ERP systems.
4. The site provides a good example of how to effectively manage the knowledge gained in an organisation as a result of such an implementation.

The training section is probably the most useful area of this site. It provides instructions guides, classroom training presentations and handouts, classes on video and web tutorials which cover the following functional areas: -

• Enterprise Reporting
• Finance
 
• Overviews
• Core User
• Customer Relations
• General Ledger/Budgets
• Purchasing and Payables
 
• Requisitions
• Change Requests
• Receiving
• Vouchers
• Procurement Card (PCard)
• Sponsored Programs
• Travel and Expense
• Human Resource Management Systems
 
• Hiring
• Staff, OPS and Student Positions
• Faculty Positions
• Position and Job Actions
• Distributions and Pay
• Reporting Time
• Using Leave
• Approving Time and Leave
• Workflow

Within the training section there are also some really good Project Presentations. Highlights are as follows: -

• An Introduction to ERP and the Changing Landscape at UF
• Project Management, IT and ERP - Mike Conlon, Director of Data Infrastructure
• Entering Time Worked and Leave in PeopleSoft HRMS - A Time & Labor Overview
• ERP at the University of Florida - Mike Conlon, Director of Data Infrastructure