As many of you are aware, our university has been undergoing a system-wide effort to streamline and improve the University of Colorado’s Finance (FIN), Human Capital Management (HCM) and other systems, which had not been updated in roughly a decade. These upgrades, which went live last December, have been known as the Elevate project.
Senior Vice Chancellor and Chief Financial Officer Kelly Fox
Projects of this nature always come with significant challenges, but the Elevate project has experienced more difficulties than expected (to the frustration of many on our campuses). There has been a negative impact on those who work closely with the systems at the campus and departmental level. In addition, many students, faculty and staff have experienced problems with the systems, including but not limited to issues with paychecks, hiring processes, grant processing, etc.
With the fall semester nearly one-third complete, I wanted to update you about the work that has been going on with the Elevate PeopleSoft 9.2 project, which has continued to work at an aggressive pace. While substantial progress has been made to address many of the most critical issues impacting users, much work remains to be done. I thank the users who are faced with daily challenges resulting from the previous implementation, which includes many of you who are helping us work through the changes. Please know that we are very concerned about the difficulties you are experiencing and that significant efforts are underway to resolve these issues at all levels of our organization.
Today I would like to share an update on the project and to lay out a communication structure that will provide more regular updates to campus and to those who work directly with these systems.
New governance structure
First, we announced a new governance structure in June, which I am pleased to report is working well. The Executive Committee and Steering Committee are meeting weekly to ensure alignment, improved communication and that timely decisions are being made. Four working teams were developed to ensure issues are addressed holistically. The work teams include: Finance, Grants, Human Capital Management and the Human Resources/General Ledger interface.
The working teams are meeting at least weekly and in some cases more frequently. These teams include subject matter experts from the four areas and are populated by individuals from each of the four campuses. These meetings have been critical to moving the project forward in a positive manner. Additionally, the Project Governance Manager position that was added this summer has directly improved communication between the groups and throughout the governance structure.
The project is leveraging the expertise of Huron Consulting Group (Huron) to assist with project management and detailed work stream expertise. Huron has a deep experience in PeopleSoft and brings a strong portfolio of solutions that have worked in other similar environments. This expertise is helping reduce our time “reinventing the wheel.”
Critical Fixes
During Phase 1 of our stabilization process with our new structure (which was put into place over the summer), the team addressed 166 critical items of the 170 items identified. These issues were particularly time sensitive as many were associated with fiscal year end and processes necessary for the start of the school year. Following many hours of hard work that went into those fixes, we are pleased to report that the most critical issues facing the system were addressed. Today however, there are remaining issues that are being addressed in Phase 2. After that work is complete, teams will still need to complete data clean-up associated with those items.
Looking forward
We are beginning to fix the next highest impact issues, which focus on HCM, as well as beginning our work to remove a software enhancement that was added to the HCM system. As you recall, this enhancement was implemented as a mechanism to improve end-user process functionality, but has not been performing reliably or as expected. The project charter for Phase 2 clearly details the scope of this next phase of work. As you can see from the plan, work will focus on high impact fixes and is expected to take ten months to complete. Once complete, the campuses and system will identify future system optimization efforts that will ensure we have developed an approach of continuous improvement.
As we move forward, the team will be sending monthly communications about the status of the project and our progress addressing the highest impact system fixes to campus leadership and to those impacted most directly by the various work streams. We also encourage everyone to review the HCM Community Blog and update pages for HCM Community website and the Controller’s office for more detailed information on specific functionality process fixes. In addition, campus representation will be a critical part of much of the work that we have to do. We will be working to define and form campus groups to be contacted in the coming months, which we hope will provide our project team with better understanding of how people use the system and ensure they are up-to-date with the changes and progress being made.
Thank you for your continued support and patience as we address the outstanding issues. Please contact me directly if you have questions or concerns.
Sincerely,
Kelly Fox
Senior Vice Chancellor and Chief Financial Officer
