Word of the Week: Business Process Alignment

The next step for the ctcLink project—Business Process Alignment—begins June 17. Business Process Alignment (BPA) is the process of aligning our system’s core business processes with the delivered software solution (PeopleSoft ERP Solution).

To prepare for this phase, the Ciber and SBCTC Functional Teams for each pillar are working to define the set of business processes to diagram for these upcoming sessions. The task of diagramming business processes into a set of Swim Lane diagrams is standard practice for colleges adopting the PeopleSoft ERP Solution. Oracle produces a stock set of Swim Lane diagrams of common business processes for each product. These diagrams show each role as a lane (think Olympic sized swimming pool) with the process steps running across the lanes to show who does which task. In this Swim Lane example, the roles of Registrar, Admissions Coordinator, Transfer Credit Coordinator, Student and Faculty Advisor each have a lane.

Ciber and the ctcLink Functional Team are in the process of refining a set of business process flows into diagrams that will be used during the BPA sessions to assist us in aligning our business processes to the PeopleSoft ERP Solution. This adopts a more ‘flowing from one step to the next’ approach, and will include a small icon in each box to depict which role performs the task shown. See the SAMPLE Ciber Business Process Diagram below for the “prospect to applicant” business process.

System-wide SMEs will see many, many more diagrams during the Business Process Alignment Sessions June 17 – Aug 28. We are looking forward to college involvement in this process. See you then!

Word of the Week: Effective Dating

No, this ‘PeopleSpeak’ word of the week has nothing to do with finding the love of your life; however, when you learn more about this feature within PeopleSoft and what it can do, we know you’ll want to get to know it better.

Effective Dating is used throughout the PeopleSoft system. You can predate information to add historical data to the system, or postdate information to enter it before it actually goes into effect. By using effective dates, you don’t delete values; you enter a new value with a current effective date.

Here’s just one example of how this would work, in this case, with the self-service module:

Using the future effective date feature, a student, faculty or staff member can enter a summer address where they want to receive mail and indicate when they want it to go into effect. In addition, they could enter an address they intend to use when they return in the fall and enter the effective date for that address change as well.

Effective Dating Categories:

• Current: Information (think of a row of data) with the most recent effective date that is closest to today’s date, but not a future date. Only one row is the current row.
• Historical: Information that has effective dates before the current data row. There could be multiple Historical data rows.
• Future: Data rows that have effective dates that are after the current date (today’s date). There could be more than one future rows.

Lots of SMEs involved in Foundation Review Sessions

Hundreds of system-wide subject matter experts (SMEs) have been involved in the Foundation Review sessions the last couple weeks. We had anywhere from 150-200 participants each day, with 15-20% attending in-person at the SBCTC Bellevue office, and the rest online. First, SMEs had a chance to learn about the overall foundation aspects of the new system in the key areas of: Organizational Structure, Academic Structure, Person Model and GL/Chart of Accounts. Then (last week and this week) SMEs are getting a closer look at the PeopleSoft system and its many elements and features and how they will fit within our system. This is all in preparation for the Business Process Alignment sessions coming up in June. THANK YOU SMEs and College Teams for your time, input and expertise!

Clockwise boxes from upper left:

~Sherri Meadors [Clark College], Lynn Melton [SBCTC], Kristina Martinsen [Seattle Community Colleges]

~Ann Woodlief [Pierce College], Susan Engel [Seattle Community Colleges], Scott Pendleton, Ciber

~Sherry Stroud [Highline Community College], Dani Bundy [Clark College], Gary McNeil [Seattle]

 ~Elaine Urrutia [Olympic College]

~Kate Bligh [Highline Community College]

 

Payroll SMEs! Perhaps the most important SMEs of all!

Left to Right: Jim Craswell, Bellevue College and Everett Community College Payroll; Mona Himmelberger, Walla Walla Payroll; Sherri Meadors, Clark College Payroll; Susan Engel, Seattle Community Colleges Payroll; Olga Krichevskaya, Bellevue College and Everett Community College Payroll; Kristina Martinsen, Seattle Community Colleges Payroll

Word of the Week: Search/Match

This week, the word of the week is presented with few words and a big visual. The word is Search/Match and it’s a powerful tool within PeopleSoft that helps avoid duplication of records throughout a student or employee’s affiliation with our entire college system, no matter where they go–say from college to college–or if a student later becomes an employee or vice versa. But, enough with the words…I’ll let the picture do the talking: (Click on the image to enlarge; click again to enlarge even more)

Word of the Week: Foundation Decisions; plus project update

Today we have a Word-of-the-Week and a project update combo! Why? Because they go so well together. Like peanut butter and jelly, macaroni and cheese, or Spam and eggs (that last one…if you’re on vacation in Hawaii, that is).

The Word is more of a term: Foundation Decisions. And, it’s what is going on right now with the ctcLink Project.

Foundation Decisions are decisions about key aspects of the ctcLink system configuration that are really the ‘foundation’ or first building blocks of the system. These first decisions set the format for such critical components as the Chart of Accounts, the Global Organizational Structure, the Academic Structure and the Person Model. If you think of building a house, these building blocks are what the rest of the system will rely on. If you think of the Chart of Accounts as the foundation building block, the structure is the “rebar” that runs through the modules and is necessary for a module, such as Student Financials, to function. See the Foundation Decisions Pyramid diagram in the photo gallery below.

So as we ‘build out’ the new ctcLink system, the decisions made in the upcoming Foundation Decisions sessions will guide the rest of the decisions in the Business Process Alignment sessions.

Now for that project update…

In preparation for the Foundation Decisions sessions that begin tomorrow, the joint Ciber and ctcLink Functional Project teams worked together last week to conceptualize how all colleges will fit into a Global Organizational Structure in PeopleSoft. The teams diagramed example-scenarios of how different single-campus and multi-campus districts might fit into the proposed models in order to identify areas where the proposed model might require adjustment. In addition the teams reviewed the ‘best practice’ recommendations for adding and merging Person Records (remember last week’s word?).  That process is called ”Search/Match” in PeopleSoft and is a powerful tool to avoid duplication of records throughout a student or employee’s affiliation with the entire community and technical college system.

The team also discussed the various elements in the biographic/demographic data associated with a Person Record (remember last week’s word?). Since many of the elements in a Person Record in the system are Global (meaning defined at a system level for all colleges) it was important for the Ciber team to understand where there are unique requirements in a community and technical college system for those data elements.

Time spent last week has prepared the Ciber and ctcLink Project team for some meaninful discussions in the Foundation Decison sessions that begin tomorrow with several groups of system-wide subject matter experts.

Check out the photo collages of the teams hard at work last week, plus a visual as a different way to explain Foundation Decisions. (Double click to start the slide show). Special thanks to Tara Keen for the photos and the diagram!

Word(s) of the Week: Person Record and EMPLID

It’s a Two-Words-of-the-Week Tuesday! Mainly, because these two “PeopleSpeak” words go well together:

Person Record

In the PeopleSoft world, every new person in the system, whether a student or an employee, has a “Person Record.” This Person Record contains the traditional bio/demo data, such as name and address, but also contains other characteristics such as their relationship to the organization, their security/permissions within the system and, for students, their residency, driver’s license information and ethnicity. You might hear some refer to this as the “Person Model,” which is simply a way of saying that each ‘person’ added to PeopleSoft, whether through Campus Solutions (CS) as a student or Human Capital Management (HCM) as an employee, has information about them captured and stored in their Person Record. And, each person retains just one Person Record even if they transition from student to employee or employee to student, or are even both at the same time.

EMPLID (pronounced “Em-pull-eye-dee”, EMPLID)

The PeopleSoft ERP Solution uses a single identification number for all Person Records, regardless of whether they are a student or employee. So, whether you are faculty, staff or student, you will have an “EMPLID” and you will only have one EMPLID across the entire college system, whether you work or attend more than one college at the same time or across your lifetime. Note: This number is not the Social Security Number (SSN), which is stored in the National ID (NID) field. (The concept of the National ID number is because the PeopleSoft ERP Solution is a global solution that has been implemented at colleges and universities across the world).

Any questions? Please send them to ctcLink@sbctc.edu.

ctcLink “Word of the Week” starts now

The ctcLink functional and technical project team members have been fully immersed in learning the characteristics and features of the PeopleSoft software we’ll be implementing for ctcLink. In doing so, they have realized there is PeopleSoft terminology (aka: “PeopleSpeak”) that we’ll all want to learn sooner rather than later–especially for those subject matter experts (SMEs) who will be involved in the upcoming Global Solution/Business Process Alignment process.

So, we’re going to share one or two words per week here on the blog. The first word is:

Pillar

The PeopleSoft ERP Solution is divided into three Pillars:

• Human Capital Management (HCM): Supports Human Resources business processes and replaces the existing personnel and payroll system (PPMS), as well as providing additional functionality around recruitment and talent management. In addition, online employee self-service will be provided.
• Financial Management (FM): Provides functionality to support Financial business processes and replaces the existing financial management system (FMS), as well as providing significant additional functionality in Supply Chain Management (purchasing).
• Campus Solutions (CS): Supports all Student Administration business processes. This replaces our existing student management and financial aid systems (SMS, FAM and Degree Audit), as well as the existing software application (WTS) that enablese colleges to deliver online information from the current administrative application systems. It will be replaces with CS’s online self-service access for students and faculty, as well as providing integration for self-service through mobile technology.

Each of the three Pillars contain a number of modules, such as the Student Financials module within Campus Solutions, which replaces the current cashiering functionality for enabling student payment of tuition and fees.

So, when you hear the term “pillar” in the context of the ctcLink project, you’ll know we aren’t talking about a column on a building, the Christian rock band, or a mountain in the English Lake District. Instead it refers to the three main software applications that will make up ctcLink.

Questions? Send them to ctclink@sbctc.edu. And, if you have co-workers you think would benefit from getting the ctcLink word-of-the-week, a huge THANKS in advance if you’d ask them if they have signed up to follow this blog.