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The Business Management Group
(BMG) was organized in 1994 as a small professional staff
group to lead and support business process improvement and
change efforts among the University's institutional units,
schools and departments.
Early initiatives included the sponsorship
of the Student Administrative Systems Improvement Project (SASIP)
that redesigned the business processes and organizations involved
with student admissions, financial aid and accounting. This
has evolved into the Division of Student Financial and Administrative
Services (SFAS) and the University-wide implementation of Banner
student systems software. Another early effort sponsored the
University-wide initiative to improve procurement services.
This effort set the stage for new forms of supplier relationships,
the replacement of unsupported mainframe computer systems and
the implementation of the Purchasing Card program.
Starting in 1995 the group was instrumental
in developing the scope and requirements for the Financial
and Human Resources Systems Modernization Project (later known
as Project X). During this project, staff were engaged with
all project teams to help plan the best possible approach to
the implementation of Oracle applications and the associated
training, user support, process, and procedure changes.
Since the 1999 "go-live" of
the Oracle applications, BMG staff has been involved with the
initiation of change in a number of administrative areas including:
- Simplifying user access and
system security for Oracle applications (which became the
START self-service application in ITS)
- Providing better tools for paying
invoices and maintaining purchasing card accounts (which
became the WIP and SWAP applications)
- Developing eCommerce strategies
to reduce the cost of goods and services (leading to the
ePortal initiative and new electronic relationships with
strategic vendors
- Improving financial reporting
in general and grant reporting to faculty in particular (including
BrioPortal acquisition and creation of the PI Package)
- Creating a financial management
tool to support our long range vision for a comprehensive
financial planning and review environment (including recasting
the role of Oracle Financial Analyzer)
Current Activities
The Business Management Group is
currently composed of a small professional staff that are involved
with a wide variety of analytic, project management, system
enhancement, quality improvement and training related initiatives.
Starting in early 2001, the group
has been involved with the development and pursuit of a multi-year
program for redesign of University-wide Business Process. The
focus of these initiatives is on administrative activities
where there is potential for significant and quantifiable improvements.
This has led to a set of improvement projects that spans most
institutional units and processes at Yale. These initiatives
include:
- Establish a University-wide
comprehensive financial management approach:
- Streamline monthly financial
management review activities
- Implement a comprehensive
budget planning and monitoring system
- Streamline core business processes
and improve their effectiveness:
- Establish an end-to-end gift
and endowment management approach
- Establish an end-to-end capital
funds planning and management approach
- Streamline overall Human Resource
appointment process
- Establish an end-to-end grants
management approach
- Reduce operating costs and increase
efficiency:
- Increase employee self-service
applications
- Optimize overall procurement
process
- Simplify overall payroll process
- Reduce total cost of ownership
of business applications
Related Improvement
Initiatives:
- Establish a comprehensive quality
assurance program to monitor compliance in a distributed
environment
- Simplify accounting structures
- Implement complementary data
warehousing and reporting strategies for various levels of
reporting - executive, departmental, organizational and account
owner
- Adjust institutional and departmental
administrative organization structures to optimize staffing
levels throughout the University
- Implement Oracle upgrade to
Release 11i in conjunction with the business process redesign
initiatives
BOP Meetings
In addition to providing leadership
and support on these BPR (Business Process Redesign) initiatives,
the group also hosts regular Business Operations and Planning
(BOP) meetings with the University's business managers and
administrators to share information about upcoming changes
and gather end user feedback. Also the group is often involved
with coordinating end user participation in the planning, testing
and deployment of new system capabilities.
BOP meeting notes can be found on OBOE.
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2003 - All Rights Reserved