FMS: 'For mere survival'

General Article
February 6, 2003

More reliable, detailed and challenging system to debut July 1, aiming to modernize center's financial infrastructure

By MATT BRIGGS

Imagine a Web-based program that integrates all of the center's disparate functions of finan- cial and grant management, reporting and procurement.

That vision will become reality July 1, with deployment of the new Financial Management System. It will replace the center's aging systems for financial and grant management (called SPOT), reporting (called BudgeTrak) and procurement (called AP/PO).

The acronym for the new system -FMS - might refer to "for mere survival," as the system is designed to insure the continued existence of the center's financial infrastructure.

Below, Randy Main, vice president for Finance and chief financial officer, and Dr. Robert Robbins, vice president of Information Technology, explain how the system will affect faculty and staff.

What is the rationale for implementing the new system?

Main: Our complex, home-grown system is more than 17 years old and uses obsolete software that lacks the flexibility to accommodate many new requirements. So it's increasingly difficult to find software developers familiar with the language who are willing to work with it. Also, it takes years for developers to understand its workings. We have been fortunate to retain a developer with this experience to maintain the integrity of our system. But if that developer were to get hit by a bus, the odds of experiencing a system failure would increase dramatically. This disastrous scenario would jeopardize our ability to stay in business.

The new system is not an elective project. I would love to continue operating our old system with a small staff and address the increasing requirements and complexity of our business-reporting processes, but this is no longer feasible. We must replace this system.

Why did Fred Hutchinson choose a package vendor - PeopleSoft and Crystal Enterprise - as opposed to building the software in-house?

Robbins: Years ago, in all areas of information technology, especially at the academic level, nothing was available commercially. Universities used to build their own operating systems and text-editing programs for their research computers. Today, if anyone did that, it would be wacky. Why would any staff want to build a text editor when they could just buy word-processing software? Once mature commercial systems are available, it is always cheaper to buy one than it is to build one with the same functionality. In the long run, we just can't run an organization of our size and complexity with an accounting and reporting system built in-house.

What accounts for the financial complexity of Fred Hutchinson?

Robbins: We are primarily a grant-funded organization, and each externally funded project is essentially a separate business, even to the point of having its own fiscal year. When you consider such financial-management requirements, we start to look more like a collection of 600 different enterprises than a single business. For each project, the principal investigator's job is to deliver the agreed-upon science within the budget and time allocated by the funding agency. Each PI must succeed or fail within those constraints.

Main: The academic research environment is different from virtually all other business models. PIs design their own research projects, develop their own budgets, secure their own funding from a variety of sources and determine how and when to spend the money, within funding-agency guidelines. This increases reporting complexity and makes it nearly impossible to attain the standardization and simplification available to most commercial businesses. But that is the way academic research operates, so we need to install systems that meet these requirements.

What can the center expect in July?

Robbins: Switching financial systems is like changing carpets in an occupied building. There have to be disruptions to routine activities. We can't just close the center in June and July, implement the new system and start up again with everything running smoothly. While we know that some disruption must occur, we are committed to keeping it small. We are developing a careful choreography to minimize disturbances.

The bottom line is, everyone who deals with these systems will have to deal with all of the issues that come with change. Everyone will think, "I used to know how to do my job, but now I have to relearn a lot of the details." For that reason, training is a key part of the project. In the spring, we will work with users across the center to make sure that by July 1, no one will run into big trouble during a critical activity, such as preparing a major grant proposal.

Main: We are switching to what I call a new enterprise system to manage our financial, grant and purchasing requirements. For the general user, this will mean big changes, and for some users, it will not necessarily mean less work. For example, one of our objectives is to increase the quality and detail of financial information available to researchers. The only way to do that is to capture more data, and that means that for some users, the system will require more data entry.

The new system is essential to the core survival of the center. For some users, the system will be easier. For others, it will be more challenging, but, across the board, the goal is to build a system that provides better financial data and that serves as the foundation for future enhancements.

[Matt Briggs is a technical account coordinator for Information Technology.]

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