ISP switchover eagerly anticipated

By Matt Kelly

Florence Buchholz said she enjoys change, so she has less trepidation about the Integrated Systems Project slated to go live on July 2.

Buchholz, a fiscal operations manager in Facilities Management, is one of about 350 workers who began using the new integrated computer system from Oracle for labor distribution on May 29. The system standardizes computer procedures University-wide and replaces disparate computing systems with a single network with all the components talking to each other.

Carole H. Horwitz, ISP communications manager, said the new system will allow users to access a variety of centrally stored data, so they will not need redundant file storage.

“People [here] were eager to use it,” Buchholz said. “They were arguing over who should enter the transaction.”

Peter Butler, who works for the campus police department, and Nancy Knight, a personnel payroll manager at the engineering school, also started using the new system May 29.

Butler said it’s working fine. “It’s like anything that is new,” he said. “Change takes a while. Once we get used to it we’ll probably say it’s great compared to the old system.”

“This has been very good, very organized,” Knight said. “When we went live on May 29, the telephones were quiet, there were not a lot of calls from people with problems.”

The only downside she has experienced is “growing pains, such as getting the computer set up and making sure the passwords are in the right places.”

Knight said she is not apprehensive about the July 2 transition, when the University will implement the finance phase for general ledger, funds management, purchasing and accounts payable, accounts receivable, order entry/inventory and cash management. On that day, employees will stop entering transactions into the current systems and begin entering them into the new system on July 9.

“There’s anxiety when you come up against something new,” Horwitz said, noting that there would be “SWAT teams” ready to respond when the system goes live University-wide. About 2,500 people have been trained on the new system, she said.