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Transform Purdue Project Update

To:       Executive Vice Presidents; Chancellors; Vice Presidents; Vice Chancellors; Vice Provosts; Deans; Directors and Heads of Schools, Divisions, Departments and Offices

From:   William E. Sullivan, Treasurer and Chief Financial Officer

Date:    October 18, 2017

Re:       Transform Purdue Project Update

I would like to take this opportunity to provide an update on our Transform Purdue progress.  Although the phased implementation of the Transform Purdue initiative will continue through the summer of next year, I am pleased to announce that the Capital Projects portion of the Enterprise Asset Management (EAM) transformation project is now live.  As we launch this first major system, it is important to recognize the exemplary work that is enabling our success and acknowledge the significant progress that has been made toward realizing Transform Purdue goals.

We will continue to work with you and members of your teams to refine the functionality of the Capital Projects system in the weeks ahead.  However, its value and ability to facilitate positive outcomes university-wide is already evident.  In fact, University Residences Director of Capital Projects, Chris Skiba, submitted the first request in the new system and shared that “The process was seamless, customer friendly and significantly expedited response time.  I could view the status of my request in real time using the dashboard feature and could see that it had advanced from initial submittal to the estimating phase in a matter of hours.”

As we celebrate the launch of the SAP Capital Projects system, we are also preparing to go live with the Maintenance portion (affecting only the West Lafayette campus) of the EAM transformation project on October 30.  Our Transformation Team will be in ongoing contact with key stakeholders as this next major milestone in the Transform Purdue initiative approaches.

Our guiding principle for the Business Process Transformation Projects has always been and will remain implementing high-quality processes and systems.  I have pledged that we would not sacrifice quality for time or cost of implementation.  It is with this guiding principle in mind that the Board of Trustees has agreed to extend the original January 1, 2018 go-live of the Human Capital Management (HCM)portion of Transform Purdue by 90 days to April 1, as we change processes and our related technology to SAP SuccessFactors.

This extension is due to additional time needed to deliver on the technical aspects of our system and processes, which we are currently testing.  We expect to successfully complete testing in late 2017 with training to begin in early 2018.  The Job Family Structure is also a key component of our HCM strategy and unfortunately, after 2 years in the making it is not ready for implementation.  We are working diligently to solve structural design issues, improve collaboration and broaden communication efforts on this structure with key leaders within the University.  We are confident this structure will be a tremendous benefit to our employees, and we will work hard in the coming days and weeks to bring a better solution that removes the current bureaucracy, manual processes and the resulting chaos for our employees.

The last piece of the transformation, the General Ledger (Finance)remains on schedule for implementation in July 2018.  We have been pleased with the positive feedback received from many units and leaders with respect to our simplified accounting structures and how we intend to solve key transparency, data integrity and manual processing and tracking issues.  All the while knowing we have a long way to go to bring this project to a successful completion.  Currently, we are finalizing a pilot program across 10 departments to test and validate the impact of these new financial structures and accounting practices.  We look forward to sharing these results with you as a key milestone to moving ahead toward a larger, more comprehensive testing and data conversion cycle.

I encourage you to continue to access information and updates on the Transform Purdue initiative at www.purdue.edu/treasurer/transform/index.  Additionally, please don’t hesitate to contact me or the members of the Transformation Teams as questions arise or if additional information is needed.

Thank you for your continued support and participation in these critically important business process transformations.