Survey on PeopleSoft
completed by Administrators
August 16, 2004 - September 10, 2004

Comments:
Question 21: Please describe any other ways that PeopleSoft has helped you in accomplishing your job:

Travel is fairly easy after security was established- however recently it is unstable; errors will occure in peoplesoft and data is not transfered correctly.

Thus far; no help. The enterprise reporting features MAY help in the future; but so far they are largely difficult to work with; especially the long "processing" delays.

Travel will be easier to submit once everyone is fully trained.

At this moment I can't think of a thing that it's made easier or faster; although I'm hopeful for the future.

It will move College/University to the electronic age.

My preception is that once security issues were resolved; people who were adequately trained transitioned nicely to People Soft. The major problems we encountered were with the conversion of restricted accounts into People Soft. In some cases dates were wrong and some were set up as the wrong type of account hindering payment processing. As these are cleaned up the process seems to be going much more smoothly. I am anxious to see some more reports and look at financial data such as ledgers. I believe this system will soon be a substantial improvement over legacy systems; but I also believe that not everyone was as prepared as they should be. Dean's offices probably needed some additional support during the conversion process. The help desk was virtually useless unless you could ask for a person by name who you knew could help you. That part failed miserably.

Not yet; but my eyes are open.

It is too early to say whether PS will be a net benefit because the implementation process; particularly in the data conversion area; was so complete botched that it will take many more months to get out from under the mountain of correction work the transition has created. Ask again in 6-9 months.

None.

Question 22: Please describe any other ways that PeopleSoft has hindered you in accomplishing your job:

Training was disjointed. Classes that I attended always had remarks such as "this just changed..make sure you go back and let anyone know who has already attended". It seems as though this product was designed for a corporation not an academic institution. There are many steps that you have to take that have no value and are just time consumming. A simple process of reviewing time has changed to a major time consummer. The screens show one week and do not match our work week (I have to go to two screens to review one week). The time is not summed..so you have to add every employees time to verify it is correct (this is complicated by any entry that was approved is showing and if you have an error it is backed out with a negative entry).

Purchase orders cannot be changed in many ways as they previously could; thus causing additional labor to cancel and resubmit. We have less control of our money. Money is not being released back into the budget fast enough when purchase orders/requisitions are canceled thich is causing us to not be able to pay bills or purchase needed equipment when we need it (funds are tied up which leaves inadequate funds).

Security Roles; I would say; are 85% of the problem in PeopleSoft. This was the last area that staff was trained in. This should have been the top priority. A lot of the roles were not explained; adequately. Roles had to be input at least four times because they kept disappearing.

Payroll has been the most time consuming process. The approval flow for hiring of personnel; etc. is very slow and office's complain that they are overwhelmed. The grant proposal submission is time consuming and you have to watch how it calculates salary dollars and the fringe from year to year. The security issues have been a real big issue; keeping personnel from being able to perform their daily duties. It took our department over three weeks to get the security and routing issues worked out so that we could process travel for faculty members. Also; for another security issue; we were told wrong security for applications to be performed.

My personal workload and that of key inolved staff has never been greater due to a seemingly endless expansion of work related to the PS implementation. My efficiency has never been lower and the work keeps piling up in extremely significant ways; such as trying to determine the accuracy of payroll every pay period and spending hours correcting errors once they are found. I've encouraged my staff to be patient; but now question how long that can be expected.

Training dealt with "ideal" situations; and there have been few of those in actuality. No one seemed prepared to address situations in which things don't work like the ideal training situations. Getting help from someone knowledgeable to resolve problems has been slow and tedious at best. (There are a few exceptions to this)

Not enough job specfic training was completed. Helpdesk was not at all helpful; took weeks for responses. Basic understanding of the system was not offered; this might have helped the user to understand the dynamics of the program. In Jacksonville we do not have a Bridges person to assist us.

I spend all my time doing HR functions; there's no time to do my other work. Problems that are fixed one payperiod "break" again the next payperiod. PeopleSoft changed the names of 2 of my employees which I can't get changed back. It put one of my employees in another department. It's possible to overpay a salaried TEAMS employee if they report leave incorrectly -- that never happened in the old system. Generated reports are not in a helpful format. Items remain on the HR worklist for too long; it's difficult to tell if something has final approval. The Dean's Office and Academic Affairs staff have not been adequately trained to help (even though they try). The Bridges people don't know the answers to many of the questions. It takes almost a month to get a response (not necessarily an answer) on a Helpdesk ticket. I have no confidence that what I see in PeopleSoft will actually happen. Inputting research grants is tedious and stressful. Few things happen in real time. Why does it take an entire day before you can see the time an employee puts in. Why can't you see a submitted grant immediately?

Department level Management level information remains almost non-existent in almost all areas. The grant post-award and funding processes remain dead in the water from the end user point of view. The core payroll & purchasing engines have demonstrated the ability to generate unpredictable and unexplainable outcomes from user input -- and sometimes out of thin air. The limited reports are of unknown reliability and reported data that should be considered reliable has to be constantly rechecked. We are just now starting to get away from having to escort every purchasing transaction through the system. The user access security system is rife with unknowns. We are still unable to get a direct; clear answer about the level of access that many user roles provide.

Too many screens to properly review time Reviewing for proper pay for an employee takes to long

I spend so much time spinning my wheels because I just can't get answers to questions. Almost everything takes much longer than before; and it isn't because it is new; it is because of the software itself. There is a hugh additional workload for College and Departmental staff without any additional funding. The reporting feature just doesn't isn't useful yet (hopefully it will be eventually). There isn't the ability to obtain data; such as account balances and payroll charges; in a useful format. There is no way to view the status of grant awards as they are processed through the DSR/C&G system. Etc. Etc. Etc. Etc. I could go on for a long time but I DON'T EVEN HAVE THE TIME TO DO MY JOB ANYMORE!!!

no ability to track funds- revenue received or expended; grant balances have not be confirmed or entered in some cases; people are being payed amounts that are not consistent with what was entered. Payroll training incomplete to address problems. Reporting training not adequete so staff cannot track or review expenses or any activity with confidence

No words can adequately describe the detriment to UF caused by this system. I find myself totally incompetent due to Peoplesoft.

Things are moving very slowly because of back-up in the central offices. All employees have been very kind and helpful.

Payable time for employees is not displayed for the appropriate supervisor.

All task are more difficult or near impossible. We are more than 6 week out and I have seen very little improvement since the start.

Question 23: Please enter other comments below:

It has been a frustrating 9 weeks. I have tried to be positive; but it is difficult at times when folks aren't being paid correctly and there appears to be nothing you can do proactively to prevent it. I think it has potential; but we rushed into this unprepared and tried to do too much at one time. Now; we have no choice; it's too late to go back; we have to go forward; even if it kills us. I originally heard that it would take us all summer to get things straightened out . It's been all summer; now our goal is Christmas?

It would be nice to have more user friendly departmental general ledgers so that we can see where the accounts are at month end and so one can easily see where the dollars were spent. What you get now is nothing but numbers. The old general ledgers were much more appropriate for departmental use. Also; there are too many security issues for personnel to be able to perform their assigned tasks.

Overall the system may be good but it came to fast to little training and checking for system integrity; down time and response time is unexceptable- Contract and Grant and DSR process is particulary behind in getting revenue in accounts balances transfered and responding to request from dept for information on accounts.

1)The training so far has just scratched the surface. We were shown a slick glossed over 'conceptual view' of how it worked. We needed to be shown the applicaton and details of how to use it. 2)The Helpdesk is understaffed and cannot answer questions. 3) 'Retro' Payroll distributions are not being processed and is leaving grants with zero money. Also; we cannot expense against grants within the proper time frame.

This transition was one of the least well planned and implemented projects I've ever been subjected to. The volumes of evidence arguing against this product from peer institutions should have been heeded. However; once the decision was made to purchase PS; more time and effort should have been spent on training and working the bugs out and less on rent; logos and polo shirts! UF administration should apologize to the staff; give them a raise and get busy figuring out how to improve the situation! Lastly; the Bridges staff should assume the proper attitude of being employed to serve the rest of us trying to accomplish the University's work; rather than the punitive; condescending tone we're often met with.

I use more paper with this system than I ever did with our old products. I have had employees enter their time correctly but have it come over for approval with the wrong hours. We have paid people for sick and vacation time on top of their 80 hrs. We have not received any financial reporting for July as the books have not been closed. I understand that this system is not secure (it tells you that every time you log on) yet one report still shows banking account numbers.

The process of converting the University to PS has been the single largest bureaucratic disaster I've witnessed in over 20 years. We have yet to find ANY process or transaction that has gone entirely as one would expect in a well conceived & executed transition. Many areas of UF business now falling under PS administration were entirely ignored until after the system was operational. The only reason PS may; at some point in the future; be considered a benefit to UF is because most of the systems it replaces were abysmal. There should be a complete review of both the process for deciding on this product and the management of the transition. One can only hope the findings of a post mortem could help avoid this type of mess in the future.

In my opinion; PeopleSoft was not the best choice of software for our University. In researching the other universities who have gone to PeopleSoft; they have encountered major difficulties with the transition and I feel that given this known issue; appropriate training for all employees should have begun several months prior to the implementation.

It was very poor planning; in my opinion; to make an entire transition of all applications all at once; rather than implementing one application at a time; ensuring that it worked properly and everyone was properly trained and comfortable using that application before moving on. At this point in the transition; it is viewed from the department standpoint that PeopleSoft has merely added to our workload without additional resources - we still have to do all of the processing we did before; and now we also have to put it all into the computer system. It shifted work from central offices to individual departments.

Also; in our department; the assistant administrator has supervision over personnel and fiscal staff; therefore; I assigned her the Dept Security Administrator (DSA) for the department. It was desired that the administrator (me) also be able to have this role. It was communicated that only one person can hold the security administrator role. This presents a problem in small departments and using the option to assign from one to the other during vacations is not an effective way to ensure that both are up to speed in assigning roles. Also; dept ID assignments for the new fiscal year caused problems. We added 18 subdivisions for budgeting purposes and the University did not plan well for moving from 5 divisions to 19 units for managing all personnel and other expenditures. Approval on a daily basis of time; I could get used to; but have to jump from one area to another to review punch times and having to total up the week's total hours by hand to ensure that 40 hours was accounted for is cumbersome. Each application in time mgt should have the capability to move from one report to another; rather than signing back in for another report on the same employee. The payable time detail and payable time summary reports do not always agree. Calculating Overtime comp earned is not always accurate. Would recommend that all reports be for the pay week friday-thursday so that we can see punch times for the pay week. Reports--ledgers--I'm concerned about the budget for the College and the actuals in PeopleSoft being out of sync for at least five to six months before we are tracking accurately. We are able to get payroll cost distribution reports; but no ledgers yet for July and it is now August 23; 2004. In question 2; above; I'm not sure; I answered "no" because I have not had time to check.

It is astonishing that the University displayed such utter incompetence in this transition. Obviously; for a project of this magnitude; you obtain your software; modify it to meet your needs; test it (including running parallel with current systems) until it works; train your personnel; and only then implement it. The University did all of these things at the same time! The people who are responsible for this mess should be held accountable!!! Who decided to press the go button in June? Who was responsible for the incredibly inept security planning? Who was supposed to make sure that there was funding to cover the additional workload at the college and departmental levels (as well as other areas such as Contracts and Grants)? Who was supposed to test the system; if anyone; before it went live? Why did we buy this ridiculous program anyway?

More info needs to be consolidated onto one screen Need post grant award training Can't review money deposits for cash accounts Need to have compensation history available Vacation/sick leave not acxcuring properly in all cases Pay check history deletes vacation & sick time Need a print option at view paycheck that prints on one page

It is taking a herculean effort on the part of staff to learn to do the functions so that they work in PS. We are slowly making progress; but I believe that it is going to be slow going for a long time. The number of glitches has been surprising. Bridges is working through them; but again; the going is slow. The transition has challenging and the faculty can be helpful by being supportive of staff rather than critical.