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Better Business Processes on the Horizon
Improvements Initiated by The Office of Administration
 Recharge Unit Services
In response to staff and business manager concerns, Associate Vice Chancellor for Financial Services, Mike Allred is developing a more precise way to identify recharge unit services. Currently, departments have no direct access to the details of billings on their ledgers, and cannot review or approve charges prior to posting.The proposed changes will standardize service unit billing requirements, streamline ledger reconciliation, and improve accountability. Detailed transaction information in Decision Support will reduce reliance on service unit Web sites for details and elimininate the need in most cases for hardcopy bills from service units. Robert Smiley, Dean of the Graduate School of Management, is looking forward to these changes. The current system, he said, results in "a combination of wasted time and staff frustration. Our staff is very excited about this long-overdue change." DaFIS Transaction Processing
The DaFIS project team has started a multi-year project to move DaFIS Transaction Processing (TP) from a client/server architecture to a Web-based application. By analyzing customer needs, this project will redesign DaFIS to be more integrated with other systems, as well as more consistent for its users so that they can better serve customers.Purchasing Card Program
The Purchasing Card Program is also quickly gaining approval. The Purchasing Card is like a corporate credit card which enables delegated departmental buyers to promptly pay for supplies and allocated goods right at the point of sale. Letha Sines of the VetMed Teaching Hospital says the purchasing card is a positive addition to her unit, making purchase coordination, vendor payment and expense movement on DaFIS much easier. "I'm a big proponent of the program, since it saves a ton of time," says Sines. For more information on the Purchasing Card Program, see the UC Davis Materiel Management site.Collaborative Self-Assessment
Units wishing to profit from proactive business processes may consider a Collaborative Self Assessment. John Gregg, Director of Controls & Accountability, said this assessment allows units to evaluate their processes. "It's not a consultation or an audit," he explains. "Rather, it's a way of engaging everybody involved in a process to determine what does and does not work so changes can be explored." Betsy Archer of Human Resources was on a team using the assessment to gauge the effectiveness of a process involving Workers' Compensation claims. The assessment allowed the campus to ensure the confidentiality of patient information. "It was great," Archer said. "You could really see how convoluted the process was after looking at the flowchart." Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Virginia Hinshaw recently stated that the campus community must "seriously and thoroughly consider ways to recover time by making our processes and practices more efficient and productive." Steps being taken by the Office of Administration will ensure that many effective time-recovery processes are quickly becoming a reality. To read more from Associate Vice Chancellor Mike Allred about the future of these and other projects, visit Accounting and Financial Services, and view his presentation to the campus last December (follow the link to "December 12th CAT Forum"). Administrative Processes on the MyUCDavis Portal
DaFIS Channel premiered on January 7th. Features of the channel include:
Payroll and Personel System Decision Support (PPS-DS) also gained a presence in the MyUCDavis portal on January 7th. It appears as an option under the "My Office" tab for any UCD employee who has access to PPS-DS. All of the PPS-DS menus, report selection criteria and reports are available through the portal—just as they would be if you logged directly into PPS-DS. Coming Soon: FedEx Project
Among the portal projects for the near future is the implementation of a FedEx online ordering system. FedEx is among the top vendors for sheer volume of payments processed each year on campus. The new system will eliminate the need for processing any DaFIS document to make your payment. Simply request a shipment, print your shipping label, and drop the item in one of several boxes that will be located around campus.How is this different from what FedEx already offers online? In the ordering process, you specify the DaFIS Full Accounting Unit to be charged—and it is immediately validated against DaFIS. Charges will then be automatically entered into DaFIS overnight, eliminating the need for a Direct Charge document. |
