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Unifying all of The Ohio
State University’s Information Systems under one umbrella
was not academic. |
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The Ohio State University has nearly 60,000 students and offers over 12,000 courses in some 174 undergraduate major programs. In terms of real estate, its campuses are spread across 15,000 acres. OSU is a world-class academic institution that is much more than a university, with an annual budget exceeding $2.6billion. |
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Under the OSU umbrella are three independent institutions, which all share a common heritage - and especially a common name - what they did not share (until now) was a common financial system. |
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OSU financial systems have been fragmented for many years. Integration between the financial systems has been limited to interfaces that transfer required information back and forth. These interfaces have inherent limitations which cause financial tracking, reconciliation and reporting issues. |
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When PeopleSoft systems implementations initially started in 1996 some consideration was given to integration of systems on the PeopleSoft platform, but in the end, was not achieved.
As these systems stabilized and matured, OSU recognized that an opportunity existed for these three major parts of the University to join forces to create an integrated financials system. Thus, an integrated financials system project was conceived along with PeopleSoft Financial Upgrade from version 7.02 to 8.4 to serve all of these areas.
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To realize this opportunity and to address system integration concerns, OSU through its Office of Information Technology, undertook this large-scale PeopleSoft Upgrade project with help of Digitek. |
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Digitek was selected only after OSU completed a competitive bid process that evaluated some 45 different Companies, to provide the additional technical staffing needed. |
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The
project’s challenging goals are to:
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Upgrade current PeopleSoft Financials for University from 7.02 to version 8.4 |
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Integrate existing PeopleSoft Financials instances into a single database |
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Implement the Grants suite of software |
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Design and implement a data archiving strategy to minimize risks of database growth |
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Design and implement a consistent, flexible set of reporting tools and processes to ensure that each area's reporting needs can be met within existing and newly supported technologies |
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From the University's point of view this project is very critical and it has been a huge victory because it is working.
The scope of the project is the implementation of an integrated financials system, consisting of the following major modules:
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Accounts Payable (AP), Asset Management (AM), Custom Budgets Module, General Ledger (GL), Inventory, Purchasing, Grants, Projects, Receivables, Billing, Contracts, and Production reporting for all modules. |
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| Also included in the scope of the project are: |
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The continued interfacing to and from other systems. |
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The analysis of current functions that could be supported in part or whole by the delivered functionality of the PeopleSoft system, e.g., University Surplus Disposal and University Travel. |
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Changes required in other integral systems, most importantly the Human Resources system. |
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Digitek's work on this multi-year OSU PeopleSoft project included morethan 20 PeopleSoft Senior Professionals, with many working in key positions. |
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Digitek's responsibilities on the project include Staff Augmentation of technical and functional PeopleSoft professionals, Project Resource Management, Contract administration, Personnel Support as well as Problems and Issues Management. |
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