1. eServices@KFUPM: Status & Challenges eServices@KFUPM: Status & Challenges Sadiq M. Sait Director, Information Technology King Fahd University of Petroleum & Minerals Dhahran, Saudi Arabia 26 February 2008

2. Agenda Mission & Vision Old Legacy Platform ERP (eBusiness Suite, Banner, BI) Other Related Services Role of ITC Current Issues The Future

3. Mission & Vision Mission: To improve, enable, and integrate academic and administrative processes of the University Vision: To adopt and sustain the best IT enabled business processes in order to support the most productive environment for learning, innovation, and research

4. Old Legacy System In-house developed or licensed individual applications Multiple databases Minimal automation, no integration and no workflow Scattered servers Paper/Pencil for form filling

5. ERP Systems Administrative Systems (Oracle eBusiness Suite) Student Systems (SunGard Banner) Business Intelligence (ETL, Reporting, Analytics)

6. What is an ERP System? Set of application software that brings financial, distribution, manufacturing, and other business functions into balance. It extends horizontally across the company’s business functions and vertically throughout the company’s supply chain. Source: Gartner

7. Goals Improve effectiveness and efficiency of processes Improve support for decision making Enhance availability and access to timely and reliable information Enhance professional capabilities of human resources Improve quality of services for all stakeholders Enhance accountability of personnel, and integrity of processes and information

8. Accomplishing Goals: How? Selecting and implementing an ERP system that meets all documented functional requirements to complete all transactions, integrate functional systems Reducing transactional cost and cycle time of transactions Providing easy to use bilingual interfaces Training (especially end users) Developing user-defined reports Implementing a performance management system Implementing ISO 17799 standard for information security Improving transparency and traceability of transactions

9. Benefits of an ERP System Benefits must go beyond repairing the current state to address the future needs of the organization across several dimensions Strategic Operational Technical Financial

10. Benefits Strategic: Alignment with business strategy, Improved responsiveness, Enhanced organizational flexibility, Improved decision-making capabilities, Support for “IS Governance” Operational: Leveraging global leading practices, Increase in capacity/utilization, Improved cycle time/accuracy, Integration, Visibility of process Technical: Integrated package forces a process focus approach to implementation, reduces cost required to maintain/enhance systems, centralised application security, reduced ‘programming’ – more ‘customisation’ Financial: Savings in inventories, personnel, total logistics costs, procurement costs

11. Scope: Administrative System Administrative Systems (Oracle eBusiness Suite) HR & Payroll (recruiting, exit/re-entry visas, evaluation, salaries, overtime, per-diems for business trips, etc Finance (GL, AP, AR, B&P, cash management) Materials (purchasing, storehouse, inventory, IRs …) Projects (Research, Industry, and Internal Projects: proposals, tracking, closing, overtime …)

12. Scope: Administrative System (contd) Services Processes Maintenance requests (telephone, electrical, carpentry, plumbing services) Administrative affairs (cars, bills, …) Food services Security (stickers, permissions, …) Housing & Office PR

13. Scope: Academic System Student Systems (SunGard Banner) Admission Registration Student affairs self services Graduate studies

14. Enterprise Portal (Luminis) A framework for integrating information, people and processes across organizational boundaries Provides for students, faculty and staff with single sign-on to all university eServices, (including email, personal schedules, calendaring, etc) Currently, the portal provides faculty and staff with over 160 administrative and business services

15. eServices for Faculty eRecruitment Faculty-student relationship Self-services for chairmen and deans Online research proposals & projects Online faculty information

16. eServices for Faculty & Staff HR Self Services eProcurement WebCT Online request processing Office Services Housing Maintenance Food Services Medical Services Transportation

17. eServices for Students Online admission for graduate students Admissions tracking for under-graduate students Online registration Student Affairs: self-services (stipend, student fund, advising and counseling, loans, training/coop jobs, housing, etc)

18. eServices for External Stakeholders Alumni Services Continuing Education

19. BI Systems It refers to technologies, applications, and practices for the collection, integration, analysis, and presentation of business informationinformation The purpose of BI is to support better business decision making. Three Main Layers ETL (Extraction, Transformation & Loading: EWB) Reporting and Information Delivery (Cognos) dashboards, KPIs, score cards Advanced Analytics (SAS)

23. Role of ITC Provision of robust infrastructure (connectivity, portal, database, servers, etc) Technical resources (programmers or system administrators) for implementation of functional requirements Training for key and end users Security of access Operational support, maintenance and enhancing of the system.

24. Current Issues Shortage of consultants and other technical resources Internal inertia to change Competency and lack of desire to learn from users Unforeseen errors/bugs Acceptance

25. Future Internal consolidation of processes Collaboration with other educational institutions to allow use of internal services Collaboration with external organizations (MoF, MoI, etc) Extension to other services (renewal of licenses, iqama, etc., evisa already available) Data sharing and integration with other governmental organizations

26. Conclusions User perception improving slowly Most processes work end to end, being refined Early wins in BI indicate that the entire thing was worth the money/effort Other non-ERP applications also to be offered as services via portal

27. Thank You