03/09/07 Update on Reporting, Analysis, and Planning System (RAPS)
Last summer, interviews of 32 Medical School Departments, 17 CFU Departments, and the 6 Danforth Campus Schools were conducted. Thank you to all who participated for taking the time to meet with our project team.
Issues brought up during the interviews were documented and it was found that the top two areas of concern were Financial Reporting and Budgeting and Planning. As a result, the project team recommended to the Data Governance Steering Committee to proceed with Financial Reporting and Budgeting & Planning as concurrent projects. There will be strong coordination between the two projects.
Benefit opportunities for Financial Reporting include promoting efficiency by moving from the gathering, matching, and consolidating data (all of which entail a considerable manual effort) towards data analysis. The ability to directly and easily access useful, nonvolatile information that has common definitions will result in more efficient decision making.
The project promotes a standard budgeting tool that will serve the needs of the Schools and CFU, where currently the tools used are disparate or nonexistent. This will provide the necessary data, tools, and infrastructure to formulate budgets, models, what-if scenarios and projections in the manner required to manage operations with less manual intervention.
The workgroups, comprised of participants from throughout the University, are well underway with defining the business requirements for both projects. Business Requirements are being posted to the project's QuickPlace web site as they are drafted by the workgroups. We encourage you to review the business requirements and feel free to contact Ken Robin, Project Leader for Budgeting and Planning, or Emily Asbury, Project Leader for Financial Reporting for clarification or feedback. The link to the website is at the end of this message.
Thank you to all for your enthusiasm and efforts to make the project a success. We will keep you informed as significant project milestones are met. The development of these systems will be a long process and will involve several phases to accomplish our ultimate goals, but our intent is to produce immediate gains in the initial phases. Feel free to contact me or any member of the project team with any questions.
Feel free to mention this Web site to others in your department that were interviewed or interested in the project.
The link to the QuickPlace site is: http://notesplace.wustl.edu/QuickPlace/dw-workgroup/Main.nsfFor access to QuickPlace, contact RAPS@wustl.edu
Click on Phase II on the menu on the left side of the screen.
Click on "Requirements Documents" on the left side of the screen to see the folders containing the requirements documents.
Click on one of those folders to view a list of the posted business requirements.
Click on a document to open it. You then have the option to print or download it.
Note: To print it, click on the "Print" link at the top right of the page and print from the window that opens up (to avoid cutting off the right side of the page).
Click on “Kickoff Meeting” from the Phase II menu for an overview and timeline of the project found in the Kickoff Presentation document.