Implement Kuali Business Continuity Plan To Minimize Risk To Employees & Operations
A business continuity plan is essential to the operations of the Controller's Office to minimize risk to employees and operations as a whole.
Objective
Implement Kuali Business Continuity Plan
We are required to continue to make payment to employees and vendors regardless of interruptions to general operations. Therefore, we seek to work with other departments to implement a plan to maintain required operations when general operations of the campus are not operational and/or accessible.
KPI
Implement Kuali Business Continuity Plan During Fiscal Year 2013
The goal will be to fully implement the new business continuity plan during fiscal year 2013. Kuali Ready is the product SHSU adopted for documenting and prioritizing each departments business continuity plan. With a plan in place, The Controller’s Office will be able to remain operational in the event SHSU general operations had to shut down.
Result
Almost Implemented
The Controller's Office have completed the process for financial reporting, general accounting, and bursar offices during the current year. Disbursements and Travel Services Office is about 50% complete and the Payroll office is about 70% complete.
Action
Remaining Work
The rest of the offices will have their implementation completed by the end of November 2013.
Goal
Improve Executive And Departmental Staff Reporting Capabilities
In 2012, the Controller’s Office released the first university Cognos reports for budget and finance to all departments. In 2013, we want to take this to the next level by developing additional reports and improving on existing reports that put even more information in the hands of our executive leadership along with department administrators.
Objective
Provide Executive And Department Staff Tools Necessary To Making Short-Term And Long-Term Decisions
The use of dashboards is quickly becoming the general tool used by executive administration to obtain information quickly and answer questions. This information also has to be comparable to previous years so that projections can be made. Nothing like this is currently available at SHSU. Additionally, departments currently have to access multiple reports and customize them on their own to create comparable data. This can be remedied by comparable reports along with a dashboard setup.
KPI
Additional Reports Developed By The Controller's Office
We are striving to have at least two new reports per department to assist the university community with answering questions about their funding and operations.
Result
Continued Improvement
Financial Reporting created three new reports over the course of the fiscal year. These included the purchase order detail, projected fund balance, and endowment fund balance reports. However, the first dashboard is still in development for the coming fiscal year.
Action
Focus On Dashboards
Financial reporting completed the base reports needed for creating the first dashboard for administration. This will need to be a primary focus in the coming fiscal year.
Goal
Review And Improve Existing Financial Training Programs For Faculty And Staff
With all the changes at SHSU in finance, there is a need for additional training as more reports are developed and more information is available to faculty and staff.
Objective
Increase Community Development For Financial Decision Making
The increase in community development for financial decision making will need to be accomplished by reviewing and improving existing training programs. This is needed to assist departments with making decisions that impact the operations of the university. Additionally, new programs will need to be evaluated and implemented to meet needs.
KPI
New And Improved Training Programs
The Controller’s Office will first review all existing training programs to make sure they are necessary for current operations for the university community. After that review, we will assess the areas that departments could use additional training programs to either use existing tools available to them or increase general financial knowledge for decision making.
Result
Improvements Made
The trainings for the current year were reviewed by the various offices. Cognos was setup as our main training system for departmental information. Travel is currently establishing training programs through Talent Management. These have provide major enhancements to our training programs.
Action
Future Training
The next round of training improvements are in the works. We continue to focus on developing new web-based training programs in Talent Management. Additionally, we are considering purchasing a mobile laptop system that will allow us to conduct training within departments without them having to come to specific locations.
Goal
Review And Improve Development Programs For Controller's Office Staff
During the implementation of Banner, staff development for the Controller’s Office staff was put on hold in many aspects. In 2013, we seek to improve development programs through MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) and other sources that will minimize development cost in addition to national and state conferences that are standard development.
Objective
Increase Development For Controller's Office Staff
The increase in development for Controller’s Office staff will lead to our ability to better recognize issues and assist departments with their operations.
KPI
Development For Each Staff Member
Each staff member should attend at least one development program through fiscal year 2013. This can be accomplished by either on-campus or off-campus development programs. Additionally, the Controller’s Office will be testing the ability to use MOOCs within professional development since it is a free tool to all users.
Result
Huge Improvements
In the current year, all staff had the opportunity to attend various development options that included TASSCUBO, BUCS, a women's leadership program, Ellucian conference, CBMI, etc. We also conducted a general staff development day that corresponded with our staff appreciation lunch. For this program, we studied Strength Finder 2.0.
Action
Complete
This objective is now systemic and will carry from one year to the next. It has also become part of our budget process to make sure all staff have an opportunity for additional training.