Motlow State Community College
Action Plan & Outcome Assessment Report for Institutional Effectiveness
Planning Year: July 1, 2014 – June 30, 2015
Assessing Year: July 1, 2013 – June 30, 2014
Unit: Business Office
Related Strategic Goal:
4.2 Advance our college as a role model for sustainability.
Action Plan #: BOFF-02
Action Plan Title: Improving Efficiency in the Business Office
Desired Outcome: By June 2015, the Business Office will identify and implement two new best
practices for efficiency in support of sustainability to save time and money for the College.
Description of Action Plan and Related Activities: The Business Office will engage all Business Office
employees to come up with suggestions on streamlining current procedures and processes in an
effort to improve efficiency. In addition, we when attending conferences, training and other
occasions when interacting with other Higher Education institutions, we will look for best practices or
other initiative that have shown improvement in efficiency and/or cost savings in time or money.
Team Members: Business Office employees
Timeline: Periodically review progress and assess progress in prior fiscal year each December.
Est. Cost: $500
Budgeted: Included in current budget
Evidence of Success: Each fiscal year, the Business Office will adopt two new best practices or
improve current processes for increased efficiency in support of sustainability. Processes must be
documented and be in use.
Complete the following when assessing a plan
Current Status: On Schedule
Describe Progress:
SPRING 2014:
For the period July 1, 2013 to June 30, 2014, the goal was met. The Business Office has adopted two
new best practices for efficiency in support of sustainability.
In March 2014, the Business Office updated all forms to reflect the use of Banner indexes. In
addition, we have standardized the use of the index and account number.
Banner indexes are simply shortcuts for the fund, org and program. These indexes correspond to the
old Accounting system numbers and employees are very familiar with them. Previously, employees
were using a mixture of indexes, funds, orgs and programs. It was very inefficient and confusing for
everyone.
In conjunction with the updating of forms, helpful information was provided to employees showing
what indexes were assigned to their departments as well as information explaining the various FOAP
elements of Banner. (Fund, org, Account, Program). In addition, frequently used Account number
lists have been developed and distributed to help internal users with their form preparation. Time
will be saved by persons filling out the forms as well as Business Office staff processing the forms.
In May 2014, the Business Office tested and implemented direct deposit for employee reimbursement
for a limited number of employees. Direct deposit is a best practice and using it for all employee
reimbursement is our next goal. Direct deposit allows for safer deposit of funds and savings of staff
time and hassle. Staff receiving a reimbursement receive an email with an attachment detailing the
reimbursement. Business Office staff no longer have to contact employees by phone that they have a
check to pick up. Employees receiving checks save time by not needing to pick the check up or run to
the bank to deposit the check. We will also avoid the common problem of employees losing their
reimbursement checks. For the next fiscal year, we plan to implement direct deposit for employee
reimbursement to the majority of, if not all, employees.
SPRING 2013:
For the period July 1, 2012 to June 30, 2013, the goal was met. The Business Office has adopted two
new best practices for efficiency in support of sustainability.
In March 2013, the Business Office implemented BDMS (Scanning).
The Business Office has implemented scanning for two key areas as of March 2013. All journal
vouchers will be scanned and will be accessible electronically. Hard copies will be maintained only
until the financial and compliance audit is completed. Having the information available electronically
will enable users to easily see the journal voucher within the Banner system and the supporting
documentation rather than having to search for, pull the hard copies and then subsequently re-file. It
will also be possible for Business Office employees to see the scanned journal voucher in Banner
when looking at account detail.
Scanning for the checks runs and all check supporting documentation has also been implemented as
of March 2013. This will also have similar benefits and will be more efficient in the long run.
In May 2013, the Business Office implemented SciQuest. SciQuest is an electronic requisition system
that allows users to submit requisitions for purchase orders electronically rather than the traditional
hard copy method. The highlight of the SciQuest system is it uses electronic approval ques and should
streamline the purchasing process and also eliminate the hard copy submittal of purchasing
requisitions. SciQuest will allow for much more efficient purchasing.
SciQuest is a best practice that helps reduce the transactional cost of purchasing. Other TBR schools
have been using SciQuest with success and Motlow should be able to benefit from its use as well.
Initial reaction from internal users has been very positive.
FALL 2011:
For the period July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011, the goal was met. The Business Office has adopted two
new best practices for efficiency in support of sustainability. In January 2011, the Business Office
implemented Positive Pay.
Positive Pay is a best practice that helps reduce fraud in the vendor and student payment process.
Fraud prevention will help reduce the financial burden that may otherwise result from fraudulent
transactions being processed by the bank. Thus, it will save the College money. It should be noted
that we learned of this best practice from several sources and when checking out whether it would be
a wise use of College resources to implement, we found out that TBR had actually sustained a loss by
not having positive pay implemented. This was the extra motivation we needed to get the process
implemented in a timely fashion. The implementation was successful and the College is much more
protected from a possible fraud event now that we are using positive pay.
In June 2011, the Business Office began using a best practice used by other educational institutions
utilizing Sungard Banner to load adjustments for Motlow College into the accounting system
electronically instead of manually keypunching the transactions. Ironically, the College was already
using this process to a limited extent with a few of the TN Technology Centers we support. To
improve the efficiency of our processing, we determined we could utilize the best practice for Motlow
and the third Technology Center.
Loading data into the system electronically from a spreadsheet saves the College time and money. It
takes much less time to load a spreadsheet with 1000 lines than it does to manually keypunch that
same transaction. It also greatly reduces the errors made inherent with keypunching. When
keypunching a transaction that large, errors are often made but there is not a good way to always
determine how and where the errors are made. It is only much later when reconciling accounts that
the errors are caught. In the event that an error is not caught, it could result in a finding on our
annual audit. In addition to saving time and money and reducing errors, this process also improves
the quality of the data that is put into the system. By using a spreadsheet to enter the data, a unique
description can be used to identify each transaction. This has been very useful in reducing the time it
takes to reconcile accounts both on a monthly basis and on an annual basis. It would virtually be
impossible to keypunch a 1000 line journal entry and use a unique and detailed description for each
line as the time that it would take to do so would literally be hours.
Reactions from internal users have been very positive about the improved descriptions. Reaction
from the personnel involved with keypunching the transactions has also been positive.
Describe Needed Changes:
The Business Office will continue to work to improve efficiency in support of sustainability by
adopting at least two new best practices each fiscal year or improving current processes for increased
efficiency in support of sustainability.
The staff is very excited to be engaged in finding ways to streamline processes and finding best
practices that other schools are using. We will continue to engage the staff which will help in getting
more ideas on what the best practices that already exists and are being used by other schools. We
will not limit the processes we improve or the best practices we implement to two per fiscal year but
instead will set that as a minimum number.
List of Supporting Documentation: BOFF-2 Supporting Documentation 2013-2014
Date Last Updated: 6/15/2014