BY PAMELA MCLAREN
From Dateline (September 16, 2004)
IT Manager Deployed as Campus Agent of Change
This spring, Cal State Fullerton embarked
on a systemic change in the fundamental way it operates beyond the
classroom.
In that respect, Fullerton has joined its sister
California State University campuses in a effort to institute one
standard system for the common business practices – record
keeping, enrollment, human resources and finances – all the
universities perform. All 23 CSU campuses and the Chancellor’s
Office, are making, or have made, the switch to CSU’s Common
Management System using PeopleSoft applications.
The CMS project began in 1998 with the mission of
providing an efficient, effective, high-quality service to students,
faculty and staff.
“Several of the campuses were faced with a
decision: what to do with their aging computer application software
involved with financial and student records. In addition, campuses
were recognizing the need for sophisticated human resources systems,”
said Amir Dabirian of Information Technology, who is Fullerton’s
CSM project director. “In a world of changing information
technology, these systems were on the verge of obsolescence; they
were cumbersome, monolithic, expensive to maintain and unable to
keep up with the growing demands and complexities of information
management.”
Hence, a multiyear effort to bring a common interface
system to all the campuses. Completion of systemwide implementation
is expected in 2008.
In his role as Fullerton’s project director,
Dabirian is responsible for overseeing the project plan and keeping
it moving. Overall, he stresses, the project is collaborative and
involves people from throughout the campus. Here, Dabirian explains
what CMS will do for Cal State Fullerton.
Q: |
How will CMS affect the
campus? |
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A: |
It will touch every single individual.
CMS includes integrated software applications that manage
data and communications for human resources, finance and student
systems. So faculty or staff members who look up student data,
anyone involved in hiring or maintaining attendance records
– be it student, staff or faculty members; anyone buying
supplies or performing accounting duties for departments –
all will be using CMS.
Every campus operates differently, but we all have common
functions that we perform. It is these common functions that
CMS will affect, and everyone on campus either performs tasks
involved in these functions or is affected by them.
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Q: |
What is the timeline for
our campus? |
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A:
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We began the process with human
resources first and hope to “go live” in November
2005. We kick off the process of implementing the finance
section in November and expect to have it in wide-spread use
by July 2006. The last segment, student systems, will begin
in September 2005, with completion sometime in July 2008.
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Q: |
What has happened so far? |
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A: |
We established a campus steering
committee that will meet regularly to discuss issues, review
progress, provide resources and make decisions. In May, members
of the human resources project team began visiting campuses
similar in size and makeup to Fullerton. One of our visits
was to Cal State Northridge, where we became familiar with
some of the planning and issues they faced prior to implementing
all three modules in October 2003. We also visited San Francisco
State and Cal State San Marcos.
We looked at the strengths and weaknesses of each campus’s
efforts and have come up with ways we hope will make the process
go smoothly on our campus. One very important component is
to keep the campus informed of what is being done and how
individuals can be involved.
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Q: |
How can members of the
campus be included? |
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A: |
For starters, they can attend
one of the information forums we’re hosting about the
project, and its status – and we want colleagues to
ask questions. We want everyone to feel comfortable, to understand
how this will be a part of their lives. And we want feedback.
We don’t want to go into this in a vacuum – because
it will never work if that happens.
The first is slated Sept. 30 with others to follow throughout
October. [See box for specific dates and times.] We plan to
have such forums every semester until the project is completed.
In addition, we have a Web site [See box at right] dedicated
to providing information and updates on the process.
We’re also organizing selected user work teams to
review application design and the reengineering of our business
process, as well as to test the system, identify issues and
suggest solutions before we move to broader implementation.
People in this group will be committed to the project for
about four hours each week.
We’re asking each division to name one or two staff
members – not managers – to be our testers. These
people will be the ones we go to consistently throughout the
process for their feedback. When we
visited the other campuses, one of the points we heard from
users is that they wished they had been consulted or had been
involved earlier. That’s why we’re organizing
these teams now – at the front end. We want their feedback.
Users will impact the design of new and reengineered processes. |
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Q: |
Will there be training? |
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A:
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Definitely – and we are
already planning a support system, like the Help Desk, that
will assist individuals using CMS. We’re trying to build
an infrastructure that answers all the questions that come
up – not just during implementation, but also for the
long term. |
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Q: |
CMS is being characterized
as the best opportunity the CSU has for the campuses to be involved
in how we change things – how so? |
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A:
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A major part of the effort is
to review how we do business and to make improvements in the
process. By participating in business process analysis, many
members of the campus community will be able to reflect their
experiences, expertise and ideas about the final product.
An article about the business process analysis can be found
at http://www.fullerton.edu/cms/news.htm#fitgap. |
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