[31] in Management Reporting Authorizations Team
[Robert Murray : Draft Memo]
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Katherine R. Cochrane)
Thu Jul 3 01:32:17 1997
Resent-From: "Rocklyn E. Clarke" <RCLARKE@mitvma.mit.edu>
Resent-To: MRAUTH-L List Archive <mrauth-mtg@menelaus.mit.edu>
Date: Thu, 13 Mar 1997 17:03:06 -0500
To: mr-7th-floor@MIT.EDU
From: cochrane@MIT.EDU (Katherine R. Cochrane)
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Team:
Below is a draft of a note that will go out to the MIT community within a
few days. I am pleased that this issue has been resolved. It was a
difficult one and one that needed thoughtful consideration. I expect that
we will all take into account the feelings of the community and treat them
sensitively and appropriately.
Katie
>
>In early March 1997, the report from the Departmental Procurement
>Implementation Team and the response from the Management Reporting Project
>were put on the Web at
><http://web.mit.edu/reeng/www/finsys/iteams/procur/>. In my introductory
>statement to those documents I wrote:
>
>"The Management Reporting Project, with technical support from SAP and CSC
>experts, has closely examined the ramifications of certain of the
>recommendations [of the Departmental Procurement Team], particularly those
>having to do with the visibility of purchase orders. The Institute's senior
>management is now reviewing the status of these various efforts. This
>review should be completed by mid-March, at which time we will provide
>additional information to the MIT community."
>
>Along with the resolution of problems remaining from the initial "Release
>1" of SAP to the central financial offices, the issue of purchasing data
>visibility has prevented substantial progress towards the release of SAP
>Institute-wide. Since last October, the Management Reporting team, with the
>support of Information Systems and SAP consultants, has put a great deal of
>energy into the exploration of this issue. It has been discussed at length
>by members of MIT senior administration, including President Vest.
>
>An analysis of SAP's current Purchasing module found that to restrict
>access to Purchasing information, we would need to either:
>
>a. build an authorization structure outside SAP; or
>b. build a modification to SAP's structure to perform authorizations from
>within SAP.
>
>Neither of these alternatives was attractive. Each one was estimated to
>cost in the vicinity of $500,000. Furthermore, since SAP gives the user the
>ability to get at certain data from a wide range of paths, we would never
>be sure that we had restricted access to every possible path to Purchasing
>data. Either authorization structure would have required a great deal of
>system maintenance, removed important SAP functionality, and carried a risk
>of incompatibility with future versions of the SAP software.
>
>The issue of purchasing data visibility was discussed at length at two
>Academic Council meetings. Discussions with other universities that have
>"open" Purchasing systems (Oracle Financials and others) have indicated no
>problems from open access. In the end, we agreed that we would not pursue
>either of the alternatives mentioned above, but would move forward with
>SAP's standard authorization system which does not restrict access to
>purchasing order data, but does restrict access to accounting statements.
>
>Thank you for your patience while we have worked to find a strategy that
>best serves the long-term interests of the Institute.
>
>
>------- End of Forwarded Message
