Massachusetts Institute of Technology Issue Number 8 May 2001

In This Issue: New and Improved - for VIP Card Verifiers Human Resources-Payroll Project Underway "Great news.  My congratulations.  And high fives all around." New FSS Business Consultant _______________________________ New and Improved - for VIP Card Verifiers Verifiers of MIT’s VIP Card soon will be receiving a new and improved email notification when there is a charge to be verified. Current email messages simply state there is a charge to be verified. There is no other information provided, such as the name of the company or the amount charged. The new email notice will have information about the charge, including the date of the purchase, vendor name and address, and the amount of the purchase. This additional information will also go to the card holder. The new format will look like the example below. This improvement to the MIT Credit Card Charge notification results directly from a faculty member who receives email notices of his MIT credit card charges and wanted more information in the message. The professor discussed his dissatisfaction with the current email notification for credit card charges with an SAP executive he encountered on a plane trip. The SAP executive directed the faculty member to FSS Associate Director Paul Page. Working together, FSS team members and CAO’s Procurement Department produced the prototype of the change to the email notification, and expect that it will be available to all MIT Credit Card Verifiers early this summer. _______________________________ Human Resources-Payroll Project Underway The Human Resources-Payroll Project is underway both at MIT and Lincoln Lab. The overall objectives are to streamline Human Resources and Payroll business processes, review policies and procedures, and facilitate change issues that will accompany the technical implementation of the SAP HR/Payroll module. To support this ambitious effort, the Institute has formed the Design Review Team to facilitate the community’s input and understanding of this project. Susan Guralnik, a Senior Project Manager in the Provost’s Office, chairs the Design Review Team. As one of the core HR-Payroll Project teams, it has 24 members, each from a different area of MIT and Lincoln Lab, providing a broad representation of HR-Payroll stakeholders. Business Process Redesign The HR-Payroll Project has parallel efforts underway now. The first is to implement employee benefits data into the SAP HR/Payroll system in preparation for the November 2001 Open Enrollment. The second effort is to conduct reviews of and to redesign the business processes and practices relative to Human Resources and Payroll. Twenty-two teams are planned to review the HR-Payroll business processes and practices, and produce the redesigns. These process teams are listed on the HR-Payroll Project Process Teams web page. Several process teams are forming now, and additional volunteers for these teams are welcome. Design Review Team Chair Susan Guralnik reports that response so far to the call for volunteers to serve on HR-Payroll business process teams has been very encouraging. The Design Review Team will evaluate each HR-Payroll process redesign, consider its functionality within academic, research, and central areas, assess its impact on the community ("Will it work in my area?"), and determine whether or not the redesign improves the current process. This commitment to engaging such broad community input at the outset of this project represents a new approach to implementation, and through this effort the Design Review Team will play a key role in the overall integration of this large and complex project. Process teams may check in with the Design Review Team for feedback while the redesign work is in progress. Once a process team has completed its work, recommendations for business process redesigns are presented to the Design Review Team in two stages. At a first meeting, a team presents and discusses the issues related to the specific process. A second meeting is to enable a thorough review of the process team’s final report. Recommendations are considered in light of a series of questions posed to help determine whether the redesigned process, for example, is simpler than the current process and has fewer handoffs. The Design Review Team may also review issues relative to peak loads and data entry. Once the Design Review Team has considered recommendations from a process team, it will either recommend implementation of the new design to project sponsors, or send it back to the process team for additional work. Whenever possible, members of the Design Review Team will also serve on process teams. This overlap will help provide continuity and avoid any "reinvention" of solutions. The design review process is meant to be iterative. If the Design Review Team splits on recommendations for a particular design, they will follow a "Supreme Court model" in which the consensus opinion is the recommendation, with a summary of the dissenting opinion written for project sponsors. The first process team to undergo a "formal" review by the Design Review Team was the Staff Directory Team. One result of their work will be a new process for completing the staff telephone directory that will reduce a five-month, paper-intensive process to a two-plus month process by using, as fully as possible, an employee self service (ESS) function of SAP and the Data Warehouse. View the Telephone Directory Team's report. Anyone who has thoughts about any of the HR-Payroll business processes, has identified problems or possible solutions, may write to hrpayproject@mit.edu, or call any member of the Design Review Team (members are listed in the "Organizational Structure" link from the HR-Payroll Project Web page listed below). Those who contribute ideas and comments can be assured that they will be considered in the course of this work. For more information, visit the HR-Payroll Project web page. _______________________________ "Great news.  My congratulations.  And high fives all around." Brief and to the point, Executive Vice President John Curry’s comments responded to FSS Director Chuck Shaw’s announcement that the SAP upgrade to release 4.6 was successful, and that users could again access the system.  Curry’s email message went to all in FSS, IS and CAO who worked hard to make the SAP 4.6 upgrade a smooth transition. While these workers were not surprised that the EVP was pleased, they were nevertheless appreciative, and just a little relieved to have confirmation from senior management. There are many details to be attended to before, during, and in the wake of an Institute-wide upgrade effort. It is also important to recognize and thank all in the MIT community without whom the upgrade wouldn’t have succeeded. Nearly 50 volunteer testers performed transactions, ran reports, probed, and otherwise exercised the new version of SAP before it "went live" (see January issue of the Financial Systems Update for list of MIT Community Volunteers). John Curry sent a letter to each of the Community Testers and their supervisors expressing thanks and appreciation for their valued efforts during the upgrade. Working with staff in the EVP’s Office, FSS also organized a reception to thank the SAP volunteer testers. At the reception held in the Bush Room on March 26th, John Curry praised the volunteers for their dedication to MIT and their willingness to go the extra mile to help the Institute. He also commented that their willingness to be volunteers spoke a great deal about the kind of people they are, that clearly they are individuals who want to be in the forefront of change -- on the cutting edge of MIT’s efforts to continually improve the way we do business. "We always welcome new Community Testers. If interested, PLEASE GO TO OUR WEB PAGE." _______________________________ New FSS Business Consultant David Goodwin is the newest member of Financial Systems Services (FSS). He joined the Community Support Team as a school and area Business Consultant in late December. Dave has been with MIT for over 10 years. He worked just over seven years in CAO, and most recently was a Fiscal Officer in the Microsystems Technology Lab. Dave’s first FSS assignments include the School of Engineering, where he is a familiar face. More recently, he has taken over as the Business Consultant for a number of central areas, including CAO, Facilities, the Office of Budget and Financial Planning and the Treasurer’s Office. Dave has a demonstrated interest in community service and support of MIT’s new systems, having been a regular participant in the FSS Quality Assurance Group as a community tester. He will expand this interest both through the FSS-MIT community interface to organize and convene the SAP User Group, and by working with Debra Wiley, FSS Quality Assurance Manager, to gather volunteers to do testing, help create test cases, and match them to the user profiles. He is particularly eager to serve both the SAP and the Data Warehouse users in his assigned areas. He looks forward to helping all of his clients, and to working with the SAP HR/Payroll Project Teams as well as with SAP’s asset management tool. Current Issue Back Issues At a Glance... - FY2001 Closing Schedule - Print JV's - Time to Renew MIT Personal Certificates! - Report Variants - DW User Group Meetings - SAP Training Reminder FY2001 Closing Schedule June 20 -- Paper DINDI Cutoff (12:00 noon) 21 -- Paper SANDI Cutoff (4:00pm) 25 -- Invoice Cutoff (5:00pm) 26 -- E-Sandi Cutoff (3:00pm); Travel Voucher Cutoff (5:00pm) 29 -- Journal Voucher Cutoff (12:00 noon); final entries to research WBS; internal provider activity closed 30 -- Credit Card Cutoff (12:00 midnight) July 2 -- On-line statements available for review 12 -- Period 13 closed (12:00 noon) Closing workshops will be held as usual this year (location to be determined) and will cover typical accounting questions. This year there will be no demos of journal vouchers and BrioQuery reports as was done last year. Dates for Closing Workshops are: Tuesday, June 19th (12:00 noon to 1:30pm) Thursday, June 28th (12:00 noon to 1:30pm) <top> Printing JVs The best way to print a JV is from the JVs posted or JVs parked report. Use the following navigation path from the SAP User Menu screen or type in the transaction code from any screen. NAVIGATION PATH: - User Menu - Role ZMIT - Journal Vouchers - JV Reports - JVs Parked or JVs Posted TRANSACTION CODE: /nzjvv or /nzjvp The Listing of Journal Vouchers per selection criteria screen is displayed Erase the document posting date field, unless the JV was posted today. Fill in the Document Number field and click on execute. The JV will be displayed. If you don’t know the document number, enter in the Posting Date fields a range of dates that include the date of the JV. Enter in the Originator’s SAP Userid field the Userid of the person who created the JV. Double click on the desired JV from the search results displayed. Click the print button on the toolbar. <top> Time to Renew MIT Personal Certificates! Certificates are your key to secure Web services at MIT, such as SAPweb, ECAT, Roles, WebSIS, and CaseTracker. Certificates are also required for Benefits, including Benefits’ Open Enrollment in November, 2001. For security reasons, MIT personal certificates expire periodically. Certificates obtained after June 18, 2000, are valid for 365 days or until July 31, 2001, whichever comes first. For information go to the Determine When Your Personal Certificate Expires & Get a New One web page. CERTIFICATES ARE NOT RENEWED AUTOMATICALLY. New personal certificates will be available beginning June 4, 2001. To renew your certificates, go to the Web Certificates at MIT web page and click on the link "Get MIT Personal Certificate." Your new certificate will expire July 31, 2002. Before getting a new MIT Personal certificate, make sure that you are using Netscape 4.5 or higher and that you installed from an MIT-developed installer available from the MIT Software Distribution web page. The MIT Netscape distribution sets several security preferences and includes the site certificate. NOTE: If you do not yet have MIT Web Certificates, get them now! All MIT staff will need them for the Benefits Open Enrollment period, November 2001. For information regarding MIT Personal Certificates, go to the Web Certificates at MIT web page. If you have a problem with or questions about certificates, contact the Business Liaison Team at x2-1177, or send e-mail to business-help@mit.edu. <top> Report Variants A report variant in SAP is a way to save the values you’ve entered in the selection fields for a report. Each variant is tied to a specific report, and the purpose of the variant is to eliminate repeated data entry. Once a variant is saved, it can be used every time a report is run. An example might be a consolidated Summary Statement run regularly on three cost objects. There are specific standards for naming variants at MIT. Every report variant name has 14 characters. The first seven characters must begin with "RV," then the first four digits of your profit center number, and a hyphen. The hyphen is followed by whatever seven alpha or numeric characters you wish. It is recommended that when you save a variant, you also "protect" it so other people will not inadvertently change it. This is done by checking the "Protect variant" box whenever you save a variant. To maintain protection, you must do this every time you change the variant. Further information on report variants is available in the SAP for MIT documentation. <top> DW User Group Meetings Data Warehouse now offers structured user group meetings and demonstrations every Thursday. Staff members are available for hands-on help during this time. You may check the Data Warehouse home page for the complete schedule, topics, time and location of these user group meetings. <top> SAP Training Reminder Anyone needing SAP training is invited to visit our SAP for MIT training web pages. <top>   Publisher's Box Financial Systems Update is an occasional Web-based publication designed to keep the MIT community informed about the Institute's new financial tools. Comments and suggestions for future articles are welcome! E-mail the entire editorial board at fss-eboard@mit.edu or contact individual members. They are: EDITORIAL BOARD Janet Sahlstrom Financial Systems Services Managing Editor janets@mit.edu Daniel Pope Financial Systems Services Production Manager dpope@mit.edu John Hynes Financial Systems Services hynes@mit.edu Linda Lancaster Controller's Accounting Office lindal@mit.edu Peggie McGrath Information Systems mmcgrath@mit.edu Shirley Picardi Financial Systems Services picardi@mit.edu Janet Snover Office of the Executive Vice President jsnover@mit.edu Peg Warner Office of Budget and Financial Planning pwarner@mit.edu Jane White Financial Systems Services jfw@mit.edu Production Staff Nancy Gift Financial Systems Services   Paper mail for Financial Systems Update may be sent to the newsletter in care of: Financial Systems Services W92-210, MIT 77 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02139-4307 Copyright © 2001 Massachusetts Institute of Technology