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What is the 21st Century Project? |
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What is the CSU/SCO 21st Century Project? |
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How is the CSU/SCO 21st Century Project Organized? |
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How Can I Provide Feedback or Ask Questions Related to the Project? |
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What is the Official Employment Roster? |
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What is CIRS? |
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What is ERP? |
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What is IWAY? |
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What is PIMS? |
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What is SAP? |
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Webcast Questions & Answers - July 23, 2007 and August 16, 2007 |
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Webcast Questions & Answers - September 27, 2007 |
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What is the 21st Century Project? |
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The State Controller's Office (SCO) is responsible for issuing pay to employees of the State Civil Service, California State University (CSU), Judicial Council and judges, legislative staff, and elected officials. Employees are spread throughout California and in other states, ranging from elected officials, managers and supervisors, and higher education faculty, to rank and file workers in a variety of occupations. The State includes over 150 departments and 24 CSU campuses. To meet its responsibilities, the SCO operates large, complex legacy systems. While there are interfaces between the various systems, they were designed as separate stovepipe applications and thus are not integrated. The SCO's 21st Century Project is a collaborative statewide effort that will replace California's human resources and payroll legacy system with an integrated human resources management system (HRMS). Related business processes across the state will also be reviewed and updated as necessary. The SCO has selected SAP Public Services, Inc. (SAP) as the software vendor for this project.
As the pay agent for the CSU, the SCO retains responsibility for all aspects of payroll processing that they currently perform. However, there is now an opportunity for the CSU to streamline the way in which it operates in conjunction with the SCO. The SCO Project Team (which includes members from a system integration company, Bearing Point) is responsible for the actual implementation of the software to accommodate all functionality required for the calculation of pay for CSU faculty and staff (including the conversion of data from the legacy application to SAP).
Additional information specific to the SCO's 21st Century Project can be found at: http://www.21stcentury.ca.gov/index.shtml. |
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What is the CSU/SCO 21st Century Project? |
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As a result of the SCO's 21st Century Project, work is necessary to integrate the CSU’s Common Management System (CMS) baseline application with the SCO’s selected software and to update campus business processes accordingly. This work is defined as the CSU/SCO 21st Century Project. CSU/SCO 21st Century Project teams have been formed to support this effort by; attending meetings with the SCO to review and advise as questions arise, providing feedback regarding application design, supplying information about CSU policies and business practices, working with the SCO to develop a streamlined approach to sharing data between the applications, and creating a new CSU integrated human resources data warehouse that supports required data, reporting, and analytic functions. |
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How is the CSU/SCO 21st Century Project Organized? |
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The CSU/SCO 21st Century Project organization consists of project leadership, a project management team, development and deployment teams, and advisory groups.
An organization chart for the project can be found on the project website: http://cms.calstate.edu/T2_CMSSCO_21stCentury.asp. |
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How Can I Provide Feedback or Ask Questions Related to the Project? |
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Feedback and questions related to the project should be sent to: 21questions@calstate.edu. |
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What is the Official Employment Roster? |
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The Official Employment Roster is the official payroll record that includes information related to pay. It is comprised of data elements, fields and transactions used by the State Controller's Office for the purposes of generating pay for the CSU. |
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What is CIRS? |
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Human Resources - Information Support and Analysis (HR-ISA), part of Systemwide Human Resources, currently maintains the Campus Information Retrieval System (CIRS), the systemwide data warehouse for human resources, payroll, pay scale, and leave accounting information. CIRS contains a large repository of reports available to all campuses and the Chancellor's Office as well as custom reporting capabilities. The system is scheduled to be retired in the future. The Data & Reporting/Data Warehouse Team is charged with ensuring that CIRS reporting capabilities will be provided via a new systemwide data warehouse. |
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What is ERP? |
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ERP refers to “enterprise resource planning” and can be defined as a software solution that addresses the enterprise needs of an organization. It is an industry term for the broad set of activities supported by multi-module application software. ERPs integrate selected business processes and data of an organization into a unified system. A typical ERP system will use multiple components of computer software and hardware to achieve the integration. A key ingredient of most ERP systems is the use of a unified database to store data for the various system modules. |
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What is IWAY? |
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IWAY is a third party integrated tool from Information Builders. The State Controller’s Office (SCO) has proposed the use of this tool to integrate SAP with CSU’s CMS baseline application. |
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What is PIMS? |
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PIMS refers to the Personnel/Payroll Information Management System for employees of the California State University. PIMS is a computerized information file, or database, that contains official personnel, payroll, and retirement information for the majority of employees of The California State University (CSU) and California State civil service. Although the Chancellor's Office retains 'ownership' of the CSU portion of the database, the responsibility for maintenance and security is delegated to the State Controller, who is the pay agent for The California State University. The PIMS database resides on computers owned by the State Controller's Office which are housed in Sacramento, at the Gold Camp Campus which is part of the Department of Technology Services. |
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What is SAP? |
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SAP Public Services, Inc. (SAP) is the human resource management system selected to replace the State Controller’s Office (SCO) legacy system. |
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Webcast Questions & Answers
July 23, 2007 and August 16, 2007 |
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- Question: When will the project plan be posted to the CSU/SCO 21st Century Project Team’s website?
- A high-level project plan will be posted on August 27, 2007.
- Question: Will the CSU look to utilize PeopleSoft Self-Service to capture data and then interface as much as possible to SAP? This is preferred as our campus users may have difficulty using PeopleSoft for some transactions and SAP for others.
- Yes, where possible, the goal is to use PeopleSoft as the point of entry. There are many different types of transactions and the Business Process Team will be looking at all of them in detail. As an example, Direct Deposit is generally straight forward and could very likely interface to SAP easily. Other transactions, like Garnishments are more complex and may not interface easily. The Business Process Team has identified 115 business processes that will be analyzed carefully to determine the optimal approach.
- Question: What is the timeline for sending the communication to the campuses to identify the Campus Coordinator project role?
- The Change Management Team is compiling a definition of the role to help campuses identify the appropriate individual. The communication to campuses, including this information, should be sent within the next month.
- Question: In the webcast materials, there is mention of synchronization between CSU and SCO applications, what does this mean?
- The reference made was to the synchronization of PeopleSoft data to SAP data. The SCO will be converting HR (Employment) and Payroll data to SAP. As an ERP solution, SAP houses data in a manner similar to PeopleSoft. Since the plan is for PeopleSoft to be the source with an automated feed to SAP, we expect that some effort will be required to validate that the two applications are in sync, at least for the current employment record. While more analysis and information about SAP is needed, the Application and Integration Team is already considering approaches and tools to help with this process.
- Question: Has information from the Business Process Team been posted on the CSU/SCO 21st Century Project Team’s website?
- The “Business Process Team Scope” document is posted on CSU/SCO 21st Century Project website along with those for the other three development and deployment teams. We will also post a high-level design document to provide an overview of the planned integration between the PeopleSoft and SAP applications.
- Question: Is the SCO merging their development phases, there were four but our campus has heard that number has decreased?
- Yes, this is correct. As stated in the June Newsletter, the SCO has re-evaluated their plan and moved from four separate ‘build and deploy’ efforts (three for Civil Service and one for CSU) to two (one Civil Service and one CSU).
- Question: Should campuses plan to maintain their current access to the SCO legacy application (PIMS)?
- Yes, if campuses have an immediate need to make plans or decisions relative to the hardware for SCO access, they should plan to keep what they have. The specifics of how campuses may be using PIMS (i.e. number of users) may change, but the current plans indicate that the hardware will still be required. This is due to the fact that retroactive processing (for effective dates that precede the conversion to SAP) will occur in the legacy application.
- Question: Will all of the data that campuses currently have access to in PIMS, including complete Employment History information, be made available to campuses in the Data Warehouse?
- The Data Warehouse Team is in the process of documenting requirements, which is the logical starting point for this process. Based on the needs identified, the team will verify that all required data is available – whether in the data warehouse itself, or an alternative source. The requirements identified will be reviewed with the various stakeholders, including the HUG and HUG subcommittees, HR Officers, Payroll Officers/Managers, etc.
- Question: To prepare for the move from CIRS to the Data Warehouse, will campuses need to print employee’s current Employment History information and include a copy in the employee’s file?
- While that would certainly be an option for any campus, the CSU/SCO 21st Century Project Team hopes to avoid additional paper and plans to make all necessary data available electronically. This would include vetting the results of the team’s planned approach with the various stakeholder groups like the payroll users, Payroll Officers/Managers, the HUG, etc.
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Webcast Questions & Answers
September 27, 2007 |
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- Question: Once we are live with SAP for payroll, is it correct that any changes effective before the CSU SAP go-live date (retroactive changes) will require two transactions; one to the legacy system and one to SAP?
- Yes, this is correct. Retroactive processing will occur within the legacy application and SAP will be updated. The SCO is working out the details of this process. Bearing in mind that we plan to feed data electronically to SAP from PeopleSoft, this basically means that the current process of entering data to both PeopleSoft and the legacy application will remain in place for a period of time. Once enough payroll history has been created within SAP, this process will cease, and the plan is for entries to be made to PeopleSoft only (with electronic update to SAP)
- Question: Related to retroactive processing, will you discuss the impacts to our processing, such as LCD in the case of multiple checks.
- The SCO is working out the details of retro processing and we need to understand the proposed process (e.g. how the pay will actually be issued) before we can address this for the CSU. The SCO and all other agencies will have the same issue, so we know that this is being looked at.
- Question: What are the reasons for processing retroactive changes in the legacy application?
- We defer to the SCO for specifics on their rationale, but in general, this decision relates to issues they encountered with conversion of data into SAP and data requirements for SAP processing of retroactivity.
- Question: Are you aware that going live with SAP in October means there will likely be retroactive activity?
- We have pulled together information about all of the bargaining unit contracts and will analyze this as part of the change management plan. We will do our best to minimize the impact by planning as well as working with the campuses and, potentially, the bargaining units as necessary.
- Question: Do we know if SAP can handle retroactivity, is there a limit of up to 1 (one) year, or is it more capable of handling retroactivity than PeopleSoft?
- We are not experts in SAP functionality. We know at this point that the SCO intends to use retro processing in SAP. We can pose this question to the SCO project team and report back on it.
- Question: Currently we don’t use Position Management in PIMS, just PeopleSoft. What is the rationale for us to use it now in the new payroll system? This will have a huge impact on how campuses do budgets and their organizational structure.
- The SCO plans for payroll processing in SAP require the use of position management in that application. This does not mean that campuses need to change their approach for use of position management in PeopleSoft. We will work with the SCO to satisfy the SAP requirements for position data, which we plan to do electronically.
- Question: In regards to mapping for Position Management, what is driving this requirement?
- The SCO is the driver of this requirement. We are beginning the process of reviewing integration between the SCO and CSU applications, including that which is necessary for the SCO to process payroll. This effort will dictate whether and how we actually map position data between the applications or continue to manage positions in PeopleSoft only, with integration that meets some minimal level of SAP requirements.
- Question: You mention that the serial number will not be used in SAP, are you aware that we do use it in our LCD process?
- LCD, like all other areas of integration, is being evaluated. The current serial number is basically a unique identifier for a record. This is being replaced, understandably, with the manner that SAP needs to identify positions. SAP is similar to PeopleSoft in that each position has a unique key. Clearly, we will have to replace any function within our LCD processing that utilizes the Serial number with SAP functionality based on the information that we receive from the SCO.
- Question: When you mention that there may be some data that the CSU needs to enter directly into SAP - what are you referring to here?
- As you know, we are working on business processes and this is not final, but an example would be garnishments. The solution of entering garnishments into PeopleSoft and mapping them to SAP may be too complicated and error prone to be worthwhile. Example issues include the management of vendor data between the two applications and CSU payroll staff visibility to existing garnishments. While we don't expect many items like this, we know that there may be a few others.
- Question: On the multiple jobs issue, is the CSU the only agency that has this issue?
- No, this issue also affects Civil Service agencies, which will be going live prior to the CSU.
- Question: If there is a document outlining planned self-service offerings by the SCO, when are campuses going to receive this document? Self Service is a campus domain and campuses will need to know this information soon.
- The document referred to here is a preliminary listing of planned self-service offerings by the SCO for the initial SAP go-live. As soon as the SCO finalizes this information, we will communicate it to the CSU. We want to make sure that all of our planning and preparation is conducted with complete and accurate information.
- Question: Has there been recent activity for the Application Integration Team?
- Yes. The Team Lead has initiated discussion with the SCO technical team related to planning, scope and technology for the integration. As we've discussed in many of our communications, much of the activity for this team is dependent on efforts and outputs from the CSU Business Process Team and the SCO that are still underway. The entire team was involved in development of the scope, which is posted to the website. While the recent activities have not warranted engagement of the entire team, we appreciate that the members are interested in all developments and will improve our communication. As always, if you have specific questions about the activities of any team you are encouraged to contact the Team Lead or any member of the Project Management Team.
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