Senior Fiscal Officer Meeting
Thursday, November 17, 2011
University of Missouri
Shared Services Initiative
In 2009, under the leadership of President
Gary D. Forsee, the University of Missouri
System instituted a wide-ranging effort to curb
expenses and avoid duplication of
administrative tasks. Referred to as the
“Shared Services Initiative,” the project’s
continuing goal is to enable the university to
achieve operating efficiencies and
effectiveness across the enterprise, and to
serve as a model for best practices.
Shared services is a customer-focused
organizational model that reduces inefficiencies
and duplicative costs, and increases customer
service by:
• Continually improving the quality of services
provided
• Demonstrating superior customer service via
metrics that benchmark effectiveness
• Leveraging automation to improve processes
• Examining policies to reduce manual effort
and optimize associated processes
The first phase of the shared services initiative was
to benchmark the University’s administrative
processes in the areas of Human Resources,
Finance, Procurement and Information Technology
through the lens of a shared services approach to
optimizing processes. The results identified that
many processes were operating at a very lean per
unit cost while others offered opportunities to be
completed more efficiently. Further, the ones
where the greatest opportunity existed were those
that could best be optimized by changes in policy,
procedure, and effectively implemented
automation.
As a result, the second phase of the shared
services initiative, started in November of 2010,
is referred to as the “Operational Excellence
Initiative” (OEI). Priority initiatives were
identified, in response to the benchmark
information received, to be implemented with
an emphasis on evaluating policies and
procedures for opportunities to adopt shared
services characteristics, embracing shared
guiding principles, driving waste out of
processes, and fostering accountability by using
metrics to measure success.
Travel and Expense
COMPASS (Hyperion Budget and
Planning and Commitment Accounting
The goal of this effort is to reduce the disparate
planning processes (e.g. Access database, excel
spreadsheets, etc.) in use today to a standardized
budget template populated with production data
resulting in a reduction in data entry, and dual data
entry throughout the budget planning process.
Given that 85% of the University’s annual
expenditures are for personnel costs, this has a
great potential impact on how University resources
are managed. This initiative is to go live in by the
end of calendar year 2011.
Vendor Payment Audit
Based on typical industry experience for an organization of our size
and complexity, it was estimated that an audit of payments to the
University’s major vendors for the past 3 years may yield as much as
$1 million in savings. Internal audit was engaged to perform the audit
in August of 2011. Internal Audit (IA) obtained a download of the
University's disbursements for the period July 1, 2009 - April 30, 2011.
IA worked with management to evaluate the University’s
disbursements and identify possible duplicates. The University chose
to investigate payments that looked unusual in nature and reviewed all
of those in excess of $5,000. Only one payment was found to be a true
duplicate and it is being pursued in conjunction with the vendor. While
this audit did not result in recovery of a significant amount of
overspend, it reaffirmed the quality of our control environment
around vendor payment processing and the University is encouraged
by the results.
Strategic Procurement Initiative
The University of Missouri System is working
with many of the public four-year universities in
the state to examine the projected benefits of
participating in a statewide strategic
procurement shared services program. This
program would leverage the contracts the UM
System already has in place to other institutions,
resulting in supply and processing cost
efficiencies that could ultimately result in
significant cost savings.
Order to Pay
The Order to Pay (OTP) project was initiated to automate
University invoice processing, automate the payment
process and capture early payment discounts, reduce
time and effort associated with voucher processing,
offering vendors flexibility in payment options, and using
University defined parameters to capitalize on discounts
and allowing vendors to manage payments coming from
the University. It is estimated that the total net savings
and new revenue to the University as a result of
implementing OTP will be in excess of $9.4 million over
the first 5 years. The project is being kicked off in the last
quarter of 2011 to be implemented by the spring of 2012.
Document Life Cycle Strategic Alliance
The Document Lifecycle Strategic Alliance resulted from the
University seeking a partner best able to assist the university
in improving productivity while reducing costs associated with
the life cycle of documents. As a result of the findings, the
University of Missouri System immediately transitioned to
Xerox for all new multifunctional devices. In addition, the goal
of this new alliance is to reduce paper use, power
consumption and landfill waste by improving every aspect of
the document lifecycle, including printing, copying, scanning,
faxing, design and delivery of print materials as well as
electronic storage and retrieval. The University and Xerox will
partner on specific projects which will enhance processes and
leverage more effective document life cycle and electronic
processes.