Meeting Notes May 24, 2006

Jennifer Gehrt introduced (Mr.) Jan Loomis of CedarCrestone Consulting, one of 150 employees in the Higher Education Division. He is on campus to consult about re-starting the LASER/iSIS project with implementation of the PeopleSoft product.

Mr. Loomis has been meeting with project team leaders to get a sense of the project. The good news is that the v. 8.9 product is a mature product, so the project is no longer on the “bleeding edge.” His impression is that a great team is in place, and work will proceed quickly over the next 18-24 months. A concern is that resources will be tight.

New v. 9 will be available in January 2007. v. 8.9 or v. 9 is to be determined.

Questions: What staffing will be needed? What’s the timeline? When will the crunch hit?
Reponses: Departments have NOT required additional staffing, although change management and training have been required. Testing becomes training. PeopleSoft is easy to import from MicroSoft (e.g., spreadsheets). Will need to set up values and nomenclature, browser. Can set up “Favorites” based on personal log-in or on computer.

Strong security with layers of access will be possible.

By end of month (May), will have start, end dates. Functional consultants will be on campus first week of June.

Anticipate project will be completed by December 2008. K-State Human Resources has been using PeopleSoft for ten years.

There will be business process changes. Modifications will be “bolt-on” rather than code changes. Mr. Loomis provided a glossary; a K-State/PeopleSoft glossary will be provided later.

Demos will begin in early Fall 2006.

Student recruitment will use a different product “Talisma” which will be implemented the end of June, and eventually will be extended to Colleges. Prospective students will be managed in Talisma. Prospects will move into the PeopleSoft system once application for admission is received.

Question: what about advising flags? System has “service indicators” – negative (holds for delinquencies, advising) and positive (honors).

We were advised to think about “what are our data needs?” rather than “what reports do we need?”