AACII Meeting Notes 10/6/16, Room 46-5165

 

Attending:

Lynn, Lisa St. Croix, Pia, Robin, Sucharita, Chris, Amberly, Paula, Kim, Doreen, Pete, David, Richard

 

Missing:

Diana, Cindy, Sue, Lisa Thoma, Tara

 

Housekeeping: Tara is no longer working at MIT. Sloan will provide a replacement that AACII members will vote on.

 

Atlas Welcome Center (2-3 p.m)

Kathleen Flynn, Atlas Service Center Manager, Office of the EVPT

 

• Previous Vice-Chair of AACII
• Works in Central Administration
• Part of People Work Stream Team

 

Atlas Service Center Sponsors - Robin Elices and John DiFava; Chris Durham member of Atlas Service Center Team.

 

Atlas Service Center Overview

 

A shared vision to create seamless virtual and in-person experiences and satisfying interactions for MIT faculty, staff, students and those affiliated with the Institute.

 

Looking to bring together an in-person approach to on-line Atlas and Atlas for New Hire with the focus on the customer in order to improve current experience.

 

Atlas Service Center will be located in E-17 and open in March 2017.  It is designed to allow for a good experience for everyone.

 

Space setup includes front desk greeter, IS&T Help Desk, group of Generalists, behind will be Specialists, 2 privacy rooms, large conference room (40-50 people), new hire orientation, and IS&T repair shop.

 

Services will include (currently in W20) - Card Services, Commuting, Tech Cash, I-9.

Adding: IS&T Walk-in Help; IS&T Repair (laptop), Fingerprinting and Background Checks (currently at Campus Police); Tax Treaties (foreign nationals) - good partnership of services with I-9; Gym Membership sign up; Atlas On-line machines will be available for Atlas and Atlas for New Hires (Generalists will be trained to help); Orientations will be held on Monday (orientation including benefits) can sit in privacy room to ask questions about benefits; teleconferencing in privacy room if questions arise about retirement or payroll.

 

Organizational Structure:

Service Center Manager

6 Service Center Generalists (cross trained on functions) will provide a full set of services

Functional Specialists are responsible for Tier 2 services: I-9 Tier 2, Tax Treaty Tier 2, Tech Cash Tier 2, ID Tier 2, IT Help Tier 2, Commuting Tier 2

 

Ownership of policies & offerings will remain with responsible department (Business Owners) while Generalists are responsible for delivering service

 

The Center will report to John DiFava.

 

Milestones:

Planning & Design 1/15 – 8/16

Space 9/16-1/17

Process Definition & Improvements 3/16-2/17 (customer goes to W-20 and doesn’t know where to go to accomplish various goals)

Staffing 8/16 – 1/17

Communications 4/16-4/17

Training 9/16 – 2/17 (IS&T training team partnering and HR customer training and team building)

Go-Live & Support - March/April 2017 Center Opens

Open house in April 2017

 

• Built prototype for center on campus (Styrofoam) Federico & team provided feedback;
• Architects brought in for construction.
• Trying to provide services in one place
• In person experience can’t ever go away (i.e., I-9)
• Will have a poster at Poster Session on 10/14/16

 

3 streams of work - IS&T responsible for technology (Kevin Lyons), space (Doug Tuttle) & people (Kathleen)

 

Representation from across the Institute

 

Functions in the center; design of the space, identify changes that leverage integration of services, job definitions (Generalists)

 

Possible Changes in Processes to Leverage Integration:

Focused on customer experience:

• Shared queue for all functions
• ServiceNow for tracking interactions across functions
• Streamlined customer intake process utilizing technical solutions

By offering services in one place there will be more than one person who can will be able to respond.

 

Implementing ServiceNow (used by IS&T) (Sucharita – Center will need to distinguish what issue is being worked on so it won’t be confused with other IS&T requests)

 

• Teleconferencing for escalation to functional areas like Benefits & Payroll (Pia – this can help with on-boarding new hire utilizing this feature; new fiscal officer)
• Online submission of ID photos
• Consolidated card printing and equip stations
• Integrated Point of Sale system (replacing cash only for some functions)

 

IPIA (Sucharita - will there be assistance with this here? – TLO or generalist to assist) Kathleen will bring suggestion to group.

 

It would also be great to have a checklist of what is outstanding for new hires (I-9, IPIA) Per Kathleen there is a report to run for this information.

 

Feedback, Questions or Suggestions

Q: What is the experience like for students and staff who utilize services in W20 today?

A: Communication wasn’t good; Level of customer service in parking office is not what it should be; Receive backlash from faculty when parking was changed; Richard-It would be great if there was a user group for feedback on reporting and policies, (i.e., General Counsel forms); Dave - center can be a repository of feedback.

 

International Scholars Office is moving to E17 and International Students Office is moving to E18.

 

If anyone wants to talk to Kathleen about Atlas for New Hires contact her off-line.

 

Receive several e-mails each time new hire completes function, but it is difficult to know what is still outstanding (per Kathleen - Cognos report can be run)

 

From Kathleen - On the topic of onboarding here is a page on the Orientation and Onboarding site describing the report HR Primary contacts can run to see what activities are outstanding for new hires in their area:

 

https://welcome.mit.edu/managers/atlas-report

 

If they click on Run the Report they will see the information for their new hires.  Note that this report can also be accessed through the Cognos reports site.

 

 

Update for SANDI (3-3:30 p.m.)

Data Warehouse 2.0

Olu Brown, Director, Platform Engagement, IS&T

Leslie Wright, Business Systems Analyst, Financial Systems and Data

 

 

SANDI Report (working on about one year now)

Last round of data testing is 95% complete

Looking at Roles Authorizations

Identified SANDI roles needed for release (Report on SANDI by Org)

 

Communication Plan

• SANDI Report User Guide/FAQ is in development
• Publishing information in VPF newsletter in November
• Rollout notifications as roles setup is completed
• Mid-October send deployment plan to Pilot group and Assistant Deans
• Report Availability - Target is November
• Report will be published with FY17 data (July-current)
• Phase 2 (release TBD) to include transfer-ins and retro adjustments

 

Q: How will you assign SANDI role? A: Working on different class of users (financial & HR payroll), thinking about reusing role for SANDI Brio report for 2006 & 2007 (100 users out there – will be notifying AOs and Assistant Deans – to confirm who has access) per Doreen –best to eliminate users out there and start clean by profit center and by cost object.

 

SANDI report = anyone paid monthly, not support staff or service staff

 

Data Warehouse 2.0 Project

Garry Zacheiss, Director, Platform & Systems Integration

Faith Hill, Manager, Data Warehouse

 

• Modernizing infrastructure of Data Warehouse and identifying pain points.
• SAP infrastructure moved out of MIT’s data center now has disaster recovery in place.
• Modernize processes the way data makes it into the Data Warehouse (DWH).
• Nightly update of DWH is a pain point to reconcile to other reports.
• Need tools & processes to duplicate DWH in other systems such as MITSIS and Roles as they are updated. 

• Still need nightly feed for batch processing or flat files. 
• Make process as minimally disruptive to community as possible (Brio, Cognos, Excel, etc.). 
• Time line since late spring early summer, building catalog of data sources that come out of DWH over 50 sources; data comes from more than SAP, assess the current state of system and how to tackle process. 
• First goal for deliverable authorizations takes effect almost immediately once granted.  Timing up in the air (fall timeframe maybe by November but January 2017 the latest). 

 

Q: How long does it take for changes to take effect in Roles (central authorization system) vs. DWH – SAP and older systems feed once a day newer web based systems in real time. 

 

APR system (when a person changes jobs) results in a business process challenge as well as technology issue because Roles are assigned to Kerberos user name instead of a position.

 

Q: Are there plans to revamp the Roles system?  A: Not now

 

Q: Cognos vs. Brio – will some of the Brio reports be converted to Cognos?  Per Olu you can send e-mail to warehouse@mit.edu to request conversion of Brio reports to Cognos

 

No end of life date for Brio.  IS&T will continue to support it.

 

Data dictionary – data architecture and access and data hierarchies.  Trying to look at what can be done to improve things.  Discovery project.  What can be tweaked that can have a positive impact.  Main pain points - Data hierarchy (dictionary), roles & access to data.

 

 

CART (3:30 – 4 p.m.)

Kariuki Thande, Financial Officer, Physics

Heather Ann Finney, Assistant Director of Financial Planning and Operations, Sloan School

Magdalena Rieb, Senior Fiscal Officer, School of Humanities

 

Overview of vision for CART

DLCs have financial arrangements with others to support their operations.  Arrangements exist outside of accounting system.  Challenge is to make, execute, and maintain agreements.  It is burdensome to track over time; how much, terms, years, and agreement details.  System captures data – a complete catalog of agreements for current and future administrators.  Started several years ago.  Core principles – transparency (one to one agreements one record per agreement can be shared), collaboration (wanted record to be one workspace to allow parties to have conversation about terms and arrangements; close loop (handshake, exchange of fund)

 

A need is identified.

 

CART = Commit Agree Record and Track

 

Statistics – system has grown and encourages administrators to use - currently 97 users, spread across 33 DLCs, all 5 schools & 4 central offices, Arts and IS&T. 1,800 agreements so far, have a user group the first Wednesday of every month from 9-10 a.m., newcomers, strategize, organize agreements, develop tool further.

 

Examples of how tool is used:

 

Start up packages – faculty recruitment startup number negotiated where funds to support comes from different sources. Three agreements: Physics and Deans Office, Physics and Provost Office, and Physics internal that adds up to total (over 5 years).  Total will equal $600K move to pending status for opportunity for negotiation of final number.  Can be executed every fiscal year for transfers to be made. 

 

Awards for faculty for research, lecturers (professional and curriculum development), student groups – all awards include proposals – competitive process, DLCs submitted as pending by AO or FO as pending and Dean makes decision active or complete or rejected.  Everything recorded. 

 

Faculty retention deals – information needs to be confidential; Area Officers, Faculty Affairs Officer – enter deal and share information. Communication loop all maintained through CART.

 

Future enhancements:

• Communications – a dialogue box that is dynamic to chat in system
• Further alerts (active to closed)
• Send e-mails on your behalf to other person
• Automated transactions (set up payment schedule) creating JVs connecting application to SAP (put in draft and submit JV)

 

Will partner with VPF to further develop tool

Backing of IS&T to develop system

 

Will link be on Atlas? Should check with Robin

 

Putting together proposal to VPF for next steps for a firm commitment

Home grown system with backing of IS&T

2-3 developers to implement new features, core functionality is developed

Finding owner of system (presenting proposal to VPF)

Authorization levels

 

Touchstone login

No limit to the number of users

Template for mass upload into system

Group agreements by creating folders, tags

Will be a poster session on 10/14/16; sign up times for one-on-one demos

 

 

Meeting adjourned