Director's Message, by Jennifer Gehrt

The LASER team is in transition from a learning mode to a doing mode. For example, the Financials team has spent considerable effort learning how the Oracle Financials system works, how other universities make it work for them, and taking advantage of other implementation lessons learned. The expanded team is now spending at least half of each week scenario testing and determining system set-up and processes. The scope of the Financials project has been pared down to continue the use of eForms for campus accounts payable users, in order to reduce the initial training requirements and to flatten the end-user initial learning curve. This will allow the LASER team to focus on other key functionality that must be included in the initial roll-out of the application. The continued use of eForms is a short-term solution, whereas the full functionality of Oracle accounts payable and other modules will be implemented post go-live.

Several key infrastructure major road blocks are, or will soon, be eliminated. The Discoverer reporting tool is in production and the team is using a newly acquired tool to improve the efficiency of loading and testing of data. In addition, a new print solution has been purchased, implemented, and training provided. Going forward, the team will gain much from the use of these tools. Thanks to the hard work of the ISO and CNS team members, our test server configuration appears to be working well so we should be in a position to use this model and lessons learned in implementing a production hardware environment.

Turning to the LASER student team, the Admissions group is absorbing everything they can learn on the Oracle CRM-Advanced Recruitment application from Oracle consultants as well as from their own efforts. The team is excited about implementation of this application, which will be the first student-related system to go live at K-State. This solution will enable an already advanced K-State recruitment effort to attain an even higher level of sophistication.

The LASER student system team is becoming more engaged with the rest of the university community to ensure that the Oracle Student System is set up to meet the university needs as well as to facilitate changes in university processes. Some of these changes may be painful, but as Henri Bergson, French Philosopher said: “To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.”