[4324] in sapr3-soft
Re: Asking for Information
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (rd)
Mon Oct 25 12:25:07 1999
To: sapr3-soft@MIT.EDU
Date: 25 Oct 1999 11:19:42 -0500
From: "rd" <rdickens@cfl.rr.com>(by way of SAP Moderator <sap-request@realtimeusa.com>)
Message-Id: <7v1vuu$pi8@nexus.netconcepts.com>
Hector,
Here are a few ideas/topics for areas that your industry solution project
could discuss:
+Funds Management - planning, data collection of actual expenditures,
reporting methods, current time to close fiscal periods/years. You could
start with the department with the largest budget (athletics???) and compare
systems being used across the departments.
Some financial "hot-buttons" could be explored such as expenditure
restrictions, over/under expenditures, funding level/sources, and how these
topics are (or are not) tracked in the current system.
What types of controls are currently in place to prevent or detect
over-expenditures in a real-time nature? Efficiency/Effectiveness?
If the school wanted to move into web-based vendor integration (for school
supplies), how well would the legacy system handle this versus SAP?
Are funds distributed equitably among departments? Which tools are used to
measure this and how effective/efficient are they in the current state?
I have always wondered about the real-world impact of having internet-based
(real-time of course) reporting of the "current" financial information of
publicly funded institutions or functions (general public access). Who in
the general public would care to see what the sports bugdet/spending by line
item compared to the science department and so forth? (You might if you
were funding your son to study physics!) This assume that your facility is
a public entity. Most administrators would probably not favor the idea in
light of the chaos that results - but that is one of the many
change-management issues that ERP-SAP-WEB installations bring up. The
founders or funding providers may make it a requirement some day - who
knows? OFF THE TOPIC: I have a Notes/Web developer friend that is working
a web-based court document system that drastically reduces the turn-around
time of public record requests (and the number of clerical persons involved
in the process). All public court records in his county would be available
and search-able over the web in this project. He was amazed to see the
actual divorce files being used as test documents. In the U.S. these are
public records, unless sealed for some reason. Could you image the public
humiliation from having a line-by line testimony from an ugly divorce case
available over the internet? Please, no comments about our current
President.
Best luck with your project,
Anthony Dickens
www.dickensconsulting.com
PS. SAP is the author of SAP software but there are many other value added
resellers, consulting firms, and independent contractors that all service
those accounts. Since ERP covers so many parts of a business there are
many specialists, but only one SAP.
