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Max’s Minute: Making Progress with Taleo Recruiting and Oracle Financials Cloud

Max Davis-Johnson

This is the second in a series of articles discussing continuing improvements for Taleo Recruiting and Oracle Financials Cloud. View the previous entry at max.boisestate.edu.

Transitioning to any new system is difficult.

After meeting with you and listening to many of your concerns, we’ve identified issues with Taleo Recruiting and Oracle Financials Cloud systems and processes, and are now working with our University partners and Oracle to make necessary improvements.

Difficulties with systems, processes, reporting, training, data, and security are normal (to some degree) with any large complex system implementation. However, our response to improve and resolve these problems must be precise, with a sense of urgency.

Our primary job is to ease the burden and aid the transition. This is our highest priority within OIT.

Taleo Recruiting

What progress have we made on the Taleo front?

We’re working with colleges to streamline the Faculty recruiting profile and process. Based on college feedback, we are designing mockups for what the process will be, and will start working on it as soon as we can get buy-in from the Deans.

While this is being built, HR Business Partners will assist colleges with the recruiting process so they can focus on the candidates rather than the system. Budget related activities, such as securing a PCN, will be done in a system outside of Taleo.

Having the budget approval integrated into the Taleo system was causing delays in the recruitment process. By making the process more efficient and using Taleo for its intended purpose of recruiting and onboarding, we’ll alleviate this particular pain point.

As we work through the new faculty recruitment profile, we will leverage what we learn to modify the business processes for hiring Professional Staff.

Oracle Financials Cloud

We have made significant progress on correcting the data in the grant projects module (PPM) and reporting in OFC.

The F&A over-allocation issue for grant data has been resolved. F&A now shows correct information for transactions posted through 6/30/2016. We are now reconciling all transactions between PeopleSoft and PPM. This reconciliation is approximately 70% complete, and we have a target date to complete the process by October 7.

Budgetary control will be turned on when the reconciliation is complete. Once the data is reconciled, we will focus on improving grant reporting and processes.

Also, we anticipate new transactional reporting and strategic budget vs. expense reporting available for all account types by October 7 at the latest. More reports will soon follow.

Finally, we are beginning requirement and design sessions for travel pre-authorization, budget transfer and departmental deposits, as these items have been identified as additional key pain points. These efforts require a combination of process improvements and application development.

Financial Services, Human Resource Services, OIT, Sponsored Projects, and Oracle remain committed to doing everything we can to make these systems work better for you.

– Max Davis-Johnson

Questions and feedback are encouraged. Email max@boisestate.edu.