Costly Customizations?
Full Question:
I have heard that the Mosaic Project costs are so high because we couldn't buy a system "out of the box" that would address all of our needs and we are paying for numerous customizations.
Reply:
In fact we are making very few customizations to the software and this is in line with our objective to be "vanilla."
va·nil·la (va'-ni-la) adj.
1.
Flavored with the flavoring extract prepared from the cured seedpods of any of various tropical American vines of the genus Vanilla in the orchid family, especially V. planifolia, cultivated for its long narrow seedpods from which a flavoring agent is obtained.
2.
Lacking adornments or special features; basic or ordinary: "We went through a period of vanilla cars." (Charles Jordan)
3.
Implementing a full featured ERP product that has proven its ability to run a University by customizing the product as little as possible and instead adapting the business processes to match the software's capabilities.
4.
The fastest, lowest cost, least risk method for implementing an ERP.
The UA and the Mosaic Project are committed to a simple, minimally modified, "Regent's Vanilla" implementation of our Financial Systems, Human Resources, Research Administration, Student Administration, and Business Intelligence. "Regent's Vanilla" means that we are strongly biased toward using the software as provided. The Mosaic Project will implement the PeopleSoft and Kuali software with minimal customizations/modifications relying on the flexibility and configurability of the software along with re-engineering of current business processes when required.
The Mosaic Project has a well defined process in place to evaluate and endorse customizations that are required in order to accommodate business best practices or specific University of Arizona requirements that may not be addressed in the software. The Implementation Management team, made up of Implementation Directors, lead consultants and other project leaders, is the first to examine the necessity of a modification request and can approve/disapprove the requests. Approved modification requests then go before the Functional Council, which is made up of representatives from the various departments and colleges. All modification requests are written up with a full description of the modification, the requirements analysis behind the modification, and the personnel and financial impact of the modification. The Functional Council evaluates and endorses modifications and/or new policies as needed. In situations of differences of opinion between the Implementation Management Team and the Functional Council, the Executive Steering Committee then will make the final decision.
How are we doing? The Mosaic Project is very transparent in providing a summary of system changes and related issues on the Mosaic Website (http://mosaic.arizona.edu/System_Changes). Anyone can review the number and type of modifications that have been put into place, along with the details of the approval process and costs associated with the modification. Our consultants tell us, compared with ERP projects at other universities, we are keeping the number of modifications very low.