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With MIT’s SAP financial system now installed across the campus and with Reengineering ending, the senior administration needed to determine how financial services would be provided in the future. Executive Vice President John Curry recently announced the formation of a new organization called Financial Systems Services (FSS) which will coordinate the development, delivery, and maintenance of effective financial systems for the Institute.
More specifically, FSS will continue to support the implementation of SAP; ensure that the software increasingly meets the needs of departments, labs, and centers (DLCs); keep MIT current in terms of installing the appropriate new versions of SAP and other related software; and work to integrate MIT’s business processes.
FSS will be led by Charles A. Shaw, who has been the Institute auditor since 1988. His experience is in accounting and information systems as well as internal auditing. Staff in FSS will come from the Management Reporting Project (including the School and Area Coordinators), Information Systems, the Controller’s Accounting Office, and Procurement. The new organization will report to Mr. Curry.
In order to meet the needs of the overall financial community at MIT, FSS must be sensitive to issues related to academic and research areas. One of the common themes expressed by administrators to the presidentially appointed "Listening Group" last summer, was that MIT was not doing a good job of coordinating all the new initiatives that were coming simultaneously at the DLCs. For example, in addition to SAP, there were other new systems to learn like COEUS from the Office of Sponsored Programs and Brio Query for using the Data Warehouse. There were also significant changes in the ways that the Departments of Facilities and Procurement were providing administrative services to the community, and there was a complete reorganization of the Office of the Dean of Students and Undergraduate Education. Though all of these initiatives were important, community members felt overwhelmed by both the number and the timing of the changes.
To ensure that administrative changes will be paced more reasonably in the future, Vice President Curry has announced the formation of a Coordinating Council that will develop a comprehensive strategy for introducing new initiatives. The Council also will be charged with establishing effective feedback mechanisms with the community.
Mr. Curry will lead the Coordinating Council, whose other members include Provost Robert A. Brown, Vice President for Information Systems James D. Bruce, Controller James L. Morgan, Assistant Provost Doreen Morris, Interim Vice President for Human Resources Phillip L. Clay, FSS Director Charles A. Shaw, Community Involvement Leader Janet Snover, and Vice President and Secretary of the Institute Kathryn A. Willmore.
Here are some more details on the organization of Financial Systems Services. It will consist of the following teams: community support, procurement and labor distribution, infrastructure, and the financial team.
The community support team will serve as an important bridge between FSS and the MIT community. In addition to the School and Area Coordinators (a group of experienced DLC administrators), the team also will include training and documentation staff. Each of its members is committed to continuous improvement of central financial systems, increased community understanding and use of central databases and tools, and customized service to the departments, labs, and centers.
The procurement and labor distribution team will support business processes for all of the Institute’s requisitioning, purchase order, inventory, electronic commerce, VIP card, and labor distribution activities. The labor distribution system is a planning tool for DLC administrators to use in managing current and future salary commitments and related expenses for up to nine years in the future. It will help areas to more effectively manage and control their departmental salary budgets.
The infrastructure team will be concerned with issues like the connections between our SAP and non-SAP systems, data exchanged with internal and external business partners, MIT’s SAP development and documentation standards, and technical support on programming.
The financial team will work on business processes related to external and internal accounting and reporting. These activities include the following: financial applications such as general ledger accounting, accounts payable and receivable, travel, funds management, and cost accounting and sponsored billing. The financial team also has responsibility for business authorizations, testing and quality assurance, and cost object master data.
The FSS teams will focus on utilizing standard modules of SAP, supplemented by customized applications to serve the varied needs of the MIT community.
The combination of longer-range planning by the Coordinating Council, continued support to users by Financial Systems Services, and effective feedback methods should help to ensure ongoing improvements to these services for both the DLCs and the central administration.
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