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

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

I now have layers of computer sign ons to do the pay approval that used to take me minutes.

So far it has in no way helped me.

Has not helped.

Frankly; I can not think of one single way PeopleSoft has helped me.

I like being able to enter leave time online.

In the long run I am confident that PeopleSoft will be a better system than the old one; but it is a difficult transition.

Frankly; I can not think of any way in which People Soft has helped.

The transition to PeopleSoft has not helped me yet.

The only positive change from PeopleSoft is that I can view my paycheck online now. However; I still would prefer to get the paper copy!

not at all

Being able to see paychecks helps

At this early stage I cannot see how the new accounting system has helped my work at all.

None.

It hasn't helped yet.

Cannot think of one example.

Have used it little......neutral on its impact to date

none

The concept that all forms are processed and approved electronically sounds efficient - hopefully PeopleSoft will get to this point.

I can not think of any.

None that I can think of

In no way has it helped thus far.

In theory grant submission and tracking budgets will be easier one it is fully implemented. However; the transition has be extremely slow and painful.

Peoplesoft has not helped at all.

none

We have more control over entire process.

none

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

Trying to get a grant application out was a nightmare and we almost missed the deadline despite the fact that the grant was finished 2 weeks prior to the deadline. The staff had many problems with Peoplesoft.

Very complicated to create proposals. It appears that proposals cannot be edited by my staff; and has become my burden. Approving time and ensuring time is entered correctly is taking much more time than before

Grants; travel; hiring; purchasing; moving and tracking money movements; accessing account balances for budgetary monitoring; and all the assigned tasks that have gone undone so my administative people can attend training; and deal with peoplesoft-induced problems. Peoplesoft will bring UF to its knees.

PeopleSoft adds to my responsibilities-- I now spend time doing those things that were done by support staff in the old system. In addition; during reconciling of my purchases; I noticed that the security of this system is quite weak. Anyone can open other faculty member's grant accounts and "reconcile" them or change them if they wished. In addition; one can access others UF ID numbers. This is a significant security breach.

Peoplesoft should be discontinued here at UF. Several other insitutes have tried to use peoplesoft with the same outcome; total dis-function. Please find an alternative that works!!

The biggest (but by no means the only) issue is grants. My grant accounts are a complete mess. Nothing was transferred correctly. I have new awards I can not access. My old awards; that need to be closed out; are a mess -- we can not post things that need to clear to close out the accounts.

Administrative personnel are so overburdened that they are very slow to respond to requests for assistance. It takes too long to approve time. It takes more time communicating with personnel. It takes too long to get POs set up and paid. The mechanism for setting up intraUF accounts and billing is still is not clear to me or to the administrative personnel helping me; even though I have been asking for months - long before 6/18/04 - how we; as an auxiliary; were going to bill and collect payments. Bills for June 04 just now went out; even though they were ready to submit in early July. Fortunately; I anticipated that the system would not work well; and built up a cash balance before June 18 so that I can continue to pay salaries until our cash flow resumes. I still don't have access to my own accounts. I can't get any detailed information from transactions from the old system. Flexible benefits amounts were deducted in error and not immediately corrected. YTD income and tax information is not YTD; only "6/18 TD." Personnel lists under my supervision are not accurate.

People Soft has hindered me in hiring; in accessing grant money; and in making any personnel changes. It has cost my department enormous time and effort. The frustrations with People Soft are enormous and have led to low morale. Help has been slow in coming and incomplete when it finally arrived.

Grant submission is a nightmare. No one in the chairs' offices seems to know what to do. I can't post for a lab student position. The research account ledgers are completely off. I am waiting until I hear from colleagues that the system is working well technically and in terms of training before submitting another grant application.

The change in payments caused me many hours of work to compare my pay statements leave taxes and deductions.

Due to PeopleSoft I have had to ask for an extention to our final invoice at year end (June 30) on our federal grant project. Still; as of 8/17; our frustrated office staff has not been able to get most of our year end expenses processed through the PeopleSoft system. We have outstanding PO's and upset vendors; not to mention lots of travel that remains unpaid. The transition to this new system has gone well for us.

1. I can't get positions posted 2. I have received money from NIH that I cannot use 3. I cannot be reimbursed for travel 4. it takes hours to order animals 5. It is almost impossible to submit a grant.

Many administrative tasks are more complicated; time-consuming; and there is not an easy way to check up on accuracy. A case in point - AEF funds are totalled for the year; however; State funds are not. Difficult to ascertain if overall salary is correct without this information and it needs to be added to the system.

The transition should have been a gradual one rather totally moving over to this software cold turkey! The hindrance in performing our contract research was a clear justification for a gradual transition.

1. My last paycheck was incorrect as to number of hours. 2. I have had frequent difficulties in getting access to my paycheck information because of interference with something in my computer. 3.

We have been unable to accurately assess the funds available for research. Many functions of PeopleSoft are still uncertain and/or not fully functioning. I have not yet received any cost distriubtion that would allow me or administrative personnel to accurately project salary commitments for personnel on our grants.

When receiving a paycheck that includes additional pay for "on-call" service; can no longer track what dates/rotations are included (or not included). Also difficulty in paying for service from grant in timely fashion.

My paycheck hasn't been correct. Raises that were to be enacted have not taken place. Recruitment has been hindered as well.

Peoplesoft has hindered purchasing and has added layers of complexity to applying for grants. Since funded grants are our major revenue stream; this these complications may prove to be an impediment to the research mission. I am also concerned that fringe benefits are not being accurately allocated.

Nobody knows what to do or how to do it. There was no adequate transition

I have lost $28;000 in grant funding from the NCI/NIH because we were unable to invoice them before the end date. We are unable to order much needed new computer equipment because we cannot perform cost transfers to enable us to access our $1.8 million in grant money. We were over 2 months late paying our rent. I attempted and was unsuccessful at submitting a $3400 travel reimbursement from July 1; 2004 to August 13; 2004. Although the reimbursement request has now been submitted; I have still not received reimbursement and a 3% late fee ($102) will be applied to my Univ of Florida Corporate American Express bill.

This represents another avenue added by the University to shift work from clerical and administrative staff to faculty. The assumption is that faculty will continue to produce as usual and just assimilate this new burden into their regular work load. That strategy is getting VERY old. I have also heard from colleagues and superiors about multiple billings for a single order; problems with paychecks and feedback that the Dean doesn't see this as a problem!

We can't radioactive or controlled substances .

Where do I start? Every aspect of running my lab has been worsened under PeopleSoft. I am greatly concerned about paychecks. Annual income and withholdings are still not correct. When I asked my departmental administrator about this; I received the following e-mail from him.
*************************************
All employees;
You may have noticed that there are errors in the year-to-date information for earnings and withholding on your biweekly pay stubs. It has been determined that this information on the pay stubs will not be fixed for the current year; but should be correct beginning in 2005. However; the information on the end of the year W-2s is expected to be correct. Please let me know if you have any questions.
John
************************************
Is this acceptable for the flag-ship University of the State of Florida? It is mind boggling!!! It is expected to be fixed by 2005??? Why wasn't it ready July 1 2004??? What should we tell the IRS??? What I do not understand is; what was the big rush to get this system online 7/1/04? Why not work out all these bugs first? Why not start with just one College? Whoever pushed for this system should be fired. If I ran my research enterprise the way the University runs PeopleSoft; I would be fired and rightly so.

My office is an accreditation office; we have managed to do resident payroll and extra duty in about 30 minutes every two weeks. It now takes two full FTEs to manage the 15 screens plus per resident (x 300). It is a truly moronic system designed solely for IT job security.

I turned over most of my supervisory role with Peoplesoft to my nurse--I have been appalled at the glitches; changes; and time that this system has imposed upon her; it takes away valuable time that she could be interfacing with patients or performing research duties. Before this system was in place; my staff presented me with a timecard; asked me to review and sign--took one minute max. How is this sytem going to save time??

The transition has been a disaster. This might eventually be a good idea to go to an integrated platform; but the plan for implementing it has not worked and was not well thought out at all.

I cannot find out what has been spent in the last 6 weeks. i cannot find true balances. Simple management of research funds by the UFRF is no longer possible. It has taken 6 weeks to generate an invoice for money owed by another institution. My personnel spend many hours a week learning about Psoft but do not seem to make real headway while getting behind otherwise.

I was supposed to get a raise. Instead; my last paycheck was decreased by $400 and my annual leave allocation was less than it should have been. It has taken forever to sort out what happened. PeopleSoft is a pain!

I have never seen or heard of a more dysfunctional transition and i thought i had been thorugh many odd transitions. There was mass confusion and anxiety at ALL levels and practically no help. I recieved long lists of people I might have to approve and told to email if I had any questions. I emailed and received no answer. My department was completely paralyzed so that any issue was put on permanent hold since the departement administration was only to work on peopleoft. Many problems had to go unsolved. I am remined of a quote. " We worked so hard but every time it started to work new plans about reorganization were started. I learned later in life that we are inclined to meet every new situation by reorganization and i learned what a wonderful method it is to create the illusion of progress but in reality it causes kaos inefficiency and demoralization. ... gaius petonius 65

Many times in our department requisitions have been 'lost' midstream between approvers. Once requisitions are approved and PO's have been created; our staff must continue to make many additional phone calls to follow up and ensure that companies receive the PO's. There has been a significant delay in processing. Also; once items have been approved; they 'disappear' completely. This necessitates us printing copies of everything. Unless everything is printed - from paycheck summaries to PO's to Pcard transactions - everything is lost (long-term lost). Therefore; our staff prints everything. This often results in more printing than with the previous system. Paper is not being saved. Grant processing has slowed down. Research has been delayed due to inability to obtain access to grant money to purchase equipment and supplies. Some faculty have in excess of $2;000.00 of unpaid reimbursable expenses. Some research faculty have purchased research supplies on personal credit cards (hoping to some day get reimbursed) to be able to continue projects.

My retirement contributions; personal and state; are fouled up. For example; Peoplesoft shows my optional retirement contribution taken from my paycheck every two weeks; but Valic has not logged a deposite in my account since July 1. Purchasing for the lab is a disaster. It took a secretary and I working together 20 minutes to properly file a leave application for my vacation. The volume of spam e-mail from the University has soared. People are taking time to generate this useless information; and we are taking time to read it. The loss in productivity over the University must be horrific.

Paycheck problems Unexpected witholding problems and not quickly solved due to malfunction of the online version of the W4 Incorrect allocation of hours of used accrued leave time into a cash $s category in the current tax year(try explaining that one to the IRS!!!). Time consuming hangups with the simplest jobs by our secretaties; including hours of being locked out of something with nobody to help. Frustration to the point of tears is costly to everybody; and certainly does not facilitate a smooth transition to What????

we missed the oportunity to participate in an industry sponsored protocol because of a delay in processing of the contracr-a potential 36;000 loss. also; two additional important protocols have been have been delayed by 4-6 weeks due to problems with contracts and peoplesoft.

A trainee who received a grant from American Cancer Society to work with me this summer is still waiting for her lump sum pay check. I also have been unable to view my grant balances.

Too many email updates. Too hard to access with yet another password. Slow system.

I knew the summer adjustment would be rough and my staff was prepared for that; but now 10 weeks later; we are still trying to resolve the same issues. HelpDesk tickets are either never answered or take a month for a response -- customer service has not been up to standard.

Peoplesoft has hindered almost every aspect of the work in my lab. It has hindered purchasing - hence research; availability of funds for travel and has resulted in staff not getting paid.

The peoplesoft system has created havoc on our clinical research program. It has slowed down patients and MD payments and my financial support person is able to accomplish about 1/10 th of what she used to in a day. It is currently a very inefficient system that is not user friendly.

1. Approving time for OPS personnel is far too complicated. 2. Blanket order such as radiation must be simplified. 3. The web site is very slow; thus wasting even more time. 4. Far too many pointless emails. 5. Delays in reimbursements (especially to students on limited funds) is unconscionable.

Thing is a joke-- I don't know if I will ever get all of the money and leave days that I am owed as a result of Peoplesoft screw ups. GRRRRR!!!!!

Some pay has been delayed reaching me

Expecting a 2 week transition period to go smoothly and doing it right at the fiscal year changeover was extremely overly ambitious. I still am having trouble ordering things and have been severely hindered since the beginning of June. I have no idea at this point how my budgets really stand (as opposed to how the appear) and one of them expires at the end of this month.

People soft has introduced more busy work for the people I supervise and has dramatically reduced flexibility in several areas. It has hurt the morale of most employees I interact with. Many of its features (e.g. on line time clock) should be scuttled NOW!

need to go online to see my paycheck the interface may work for an administrator but it sucks for a faculty member

Travel submission process lengthened. Professional supply purchasing lengthened. Faculty in our department are frequently receiveing double pay followed by no pay. Difficult to reveiew regular pay stubs.

I don't like the fact that an entire employee's vacation time cannot be approved at one time if the time period cross two pay periods.

The staff are very frustrated; stressed; and discouraged.

Does not function as well as it should. Slows us down. Responses from technical way too slow.

PeopleSoft is a total disaster for grant submission; activation and invoicing. I have had to ask pharmaceutical companies who want my lab to perform tests of their drugs to purchase the reagents themselves and then ship them to me so we can move on with the experiments. I will have to carry the lab personnel time on other accounts until I can get the grants from these companies activated. It is absurd that the old system for grant submission and accounting was terminated and PeopleSoft was activated on July 1 without a period of parallel processing by the two systems to ensure transfer of account information between the two systems. You can tell that UF is not in the private sector; because the perosnnel in central administration who made this decision would have been fired for incompetence!

All functions related to leave (personal and approval of others) are cumbersome. The PS design; menus; etc. are VERY cumbersome.

1) I could not process a travel advance and almost lost a critical airline booking as a result. After our divisional and departmental staff had failed; it ultimately took the dean's office four attempts to submit the travel authorization successfully. 2) When we tried to bring a faculty recruit here; our staff had great difficulty in processing his travel. 3) Ou secretaries have traditionally submitted our leave requests; now that burder has fallen back on the faculty.

Grant submissions Pay roll allocations Vacation time allocations Ordering from grants Travel reimbursments

Question 23: Please enter other comments below:

No further implementation of PeopleSoft should be initiated until the disaster with payroll and grant administration is solved! The personnel in central administration who made the decision to switch to PeopleSoft and implement it without a phase in period should be fired for incompetence!

There was extremely POOR implementation of PeopleSoft. There was not an adequate transition period or a "backup plan". The old system should have been run in parallel with PeopleSoft (PS) until such time as PS was running smoothly. Whoever is in charge of the university's transition to PS should be replaced by someone more competent.

Those selecting peoplesoft over the objections of internal sources and warnings from other peer Universities should be held responsible. But this being UF; these indididuals will be given a bonus; as alry increase and perhaps promotion.

University was clearly not ready for the implementation of the PeopleSoft system. This has caused undue frustration and a major loss of productivity on the part of our staff and facutly. Any advantage in switching to peoplesoft system is not yet apparent.

I have spoken with Professors at other institutions that use PeopleSoft. The response has been negative in all cases. Why did you choose it?

It's still too early to know if the system will be useful. Ask again in a year.

PeopleSoft represents the greatest debacle I have seen in my 10+ years at UF.

Privacy and security safeguards are sorely lacking. When reconciling accounts; the system search function displays a complete list of employees along with their UF ID numbers. In addition; when going to the reconcile page; rather than only the logged-in user's own account showing up; a list of investigators appears for which purchasing information can apparently be viewed.

I think it is fairly obvious that this system has not been implemented well. Theoretically; entering time directly should be better than the old system. I was particularly pleased that PeopleSoft was supposed to eliminate projecting 3 days in advance what the time worked would be; but that turns out not to be the case since they are still asking us to enter time in advance of when it is worked. I don't think the time entering will improve to my satisfaction; because I see no reason for me to have to approve time worked more than once every 2 weeks.

I am sure that there have been a lot of complaints about peoplesoft. People don't like change. There were vigorous protests over the introduction of Pasteurization; and I personally recall a huge flap over flouridation of water. They'll get over it. This is the way the world is moving and I think the University; especially given its large size; is doing a great job keeping up. I have no complaints. The whiners don't have enough to do.....

I believe that Peoplesoft **has the potential** to significantly streamline financial and personnel operations at UF. It is unfortunate that the central administration did not properly research and plan the implementation of this system. It is my impression that there was little consultation with the end users (colleges; finance & accounting; grants management) about specific elements that were needed in the software.

The unrecognized opportunity costs of PeopleSoft implementation may dwarf the Medicare fraud settlement in terms of research dollars lost.

The transition to PeopleSoft has been a fiasco and is an embarrassment for our university. I have wondered why a study group from UF didn't research PeopleSoft's transition in other institutions - such as USF in Tampa? They converted a year ago and had a similarly horrible transition. They are still experiencing a lot of problems with PeopleSoft after 14 months of use. It has not saved their University any funds; on the contrary; they have had to hire additional staff to "work the system" as PeopleSoft is very slow. I have also heard of several oppoerunities where they have lost research money due to the inadequacies of this program. UF should've learned from USF's mistakes; not repeat them here! It is obvious that PeopleSoft was not created to accommodate a large research institution. Personally; I hope that our year-end spend out invoice can be sent from the contracts and grants office by our extended deadline of 8/30. I dread the thought of asking our funder for another extention due to the inadequacy of our new system. Thank you for allowing us this opportunity to share our comments.

get rid of it.

1. The first pay stub was printed all on one page and distributed. Why can't WE print it on ONE PAGE ourselves?? It is annoying! 2. This survey was mostly on topics for which I should have been able to answer "not applicable"--but that was not an allowed choice.

I think we were ill prepared to make this transition and am still not confident that PeopleSoft will provide all the magic that was promised. While the old system was clearly out dated. going "vanilla" with a program not specifically designed for our state universitites appears to me to have been a big mistake.

June/July was a TERRIBLE time to implement a new system given all the changes and personnel turnover occuring in the College..... especially without adequate training. Also WHAT'S UP with the arbitrary screw ups in salary payment amounts? I am afraid the chaos surrounding this transition will drive away some of our best support staff who have been with us the longest because they now have to do MORE work to accomplish what use to be easy.

It is too early to provide accurate feedback. The support staff are working extremely hard and there have been numerous delays and setbacks. I have one employee who can ill afford it who has an $800 travel bill that is still not reimbursed after almost 8 weeks. So yes there are numerous problems but there are always problems with any implementation. I personally think it is too soon for a survey like this. But I am sure you will repeat this again after people have a chance to adjust and/or use more functions and discover they are great or that they cause more problems.

Since we were given no choice but to replace our accounting systems; I believe we need to learn to make this system work for us. With diligence; kinks should be worked out with time. After all; we once switched over from adding machines and ledger books to electronic records. This transition should be do-able.

Get rid of PeopleSoft or get rid of the people that pushed for it.

How can an administration make such an unwise and expensive error and survive? Does the administration have the courage to publish the results of this inquiry?

Approximately 1 - 2 hours oa day of my schedule is hampered due to the PeopleSoft system. In some cases; some of our staff spend 3 times the amount of time to process something than with the previous system. When asking for help (as I did the other day) I received 3 different answers from personnel that should have been able to help us with the PeopleSoft problem we had at the time. Did anyone consider rolling out the program for one department; then expanding to a whole college; and then the university??? This might have assisted in decreasing the frequent confusion and delays in work. What is the manpower expense that the university has lost due to the rolling out of this program without proper training of the people that were going to be using it?

In my opinion; the UF administration was lured into purchasing PeopleSoft by promise of saving money by screwing their own employees for small amounts of time and pay...small amounts for each individual but would add up. To the extent that this WAS the motivation; the administration deserves everything that they get as a result of this bad decision. The general trend that this reflects is for less and less administrative help for staff and faculty and a 'do it yourself' mentality. Also; now that a computer system is involved so heavily; it is easy to engage in agentic shift and blame problems on the computer system even though it is carrying out decisions made by administrators...They can hide behind the computer. Also; it should have been obvious that such a large installation of PeopleSoft in a university would be problematic. It has been so at other institutions in rather vivid and public fashion. In short; you all screwed up; and the faculty; staff; and students will pay the price.

None printable

This system has consistently failed in academe; in at least 70 other institutions. It was never designed to handle university payroll and personnel issues. At the University of Utah in 1997=99; it's install ran years over time and millions of dollars over budget. It also never could handle reconciling old student record systems systems with the new; so people caught in the middle had to spend days rebuilding necessary records and documents needed for successful graduation. I do not understand how we were so unprepared for its inevitable failures. Surely the experience of 70+ other "similar" institutions should have been evaluated by profesionally trained and credentialed people in Informatics and ENTERPRISE IT Systems Analysis and technical Computer Systems Management; and probably Business; not just administration functionaries; before committing the whole university to it. Crash rollout in June-July also disadvantages the COM way more than anybody else. This is not our "down time". It is the end/beginning of our academic year as well as our fiscal year (vis a vis new residents; fellows; etc)and grants close down; open up processes. And the grants aplication processes----even the instructions are utterly indecipherable. And now we are having to do everything on Paper and in Peoplesoft (emails just read today). Unbelievably unable to learn from the mistakes of others. And since this is not an anoymous survey to the system administrators; who are; generally; the same folks who brought us this unworkable state of affairs. I will sign my name. Willa H Drummond; MD; MS(Informatics)

Dump it

It would be very helpful if my staff had a particular liaison that they could call and actually reach; and who could give an answer within 24 hours.

This new system has been VERY poorly implemented. Little thought was given to the amount of wasted hours that it is costing the university! It is hard to find a single person on this campus with a positive word to say about Peoplesoft.

The college and universtity seem well aware of the growing pains expected in such a complex change. I see no value in a survey; which will confirm the known dissatisfaction; not add to the knnowledge base; and lead to know constructive additional actions.

No paper isn't neccessarily better...

It's too early to tell how this system is going to work out in the long run. What bothers me is hearing how many institutions have dropped this system soon after implementing it. That is a bada sign to me.

I can see long term benefits from this system but I think there should be A LOT more resources given to the development and training team ASAP. Thanks for the survey! Can you do a series of surveys based on follow-up to the President's survey? For example - What are the reasons that faculty feel that they have no input into governance?

It is obvious that inadequte preparation was undertaken by those implementing PS in this regard: the roles and relationships (as in who approves leave for whom) were TOTALLY messed up at the start and remain in a state of partial confusion even several months later. Specifically; people I have no relationship to in the real world were suddenly able to view/change my information and vice versa.

I have not yet submitted any grants but will submit a revised application in October.

It was implimented to hastily; a beta version should have been used as a shadow for 6 months before we went to using a bugged system that people had not been fully trained to use.

This is the same survey I filled out once before but would not let itself be submitted. Most of the questions I cannot yet answer. No inservice or training on People Soft has been done other than the Bridges Advisories. This whole thing was rammed thru with lightning speed and I suspect inadequate planning and training.