Special Anniversary Edition: Welcome to our one-year anniversary of the WolfieONE project! So much wonderful work has been completed thus far, and our behind-the-scenes teams have been working hard to map out Stony Brook’s future in our new Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system! We thought this would be the perfect time to create a ‘Back to Basics’ edition of our eNewsletter, highlighting what WolfieONE is all about, the benefits from the new system, and what’s in store for the upcoming year.
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1. Elevator pitch ... what's WolfieONE?
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WolfieONE is the name of Stony Brook’s new Enterprise Resource Planning/Performance Management (ERP/EPM) and Human Capital Management (HCM) system. Oracle Cloud is the power behind the system, and each member of our faculty and staff will be interacting with WolfieONE in the future.
This transformation is something Stony Brook has needed for quite some time. Read the full history of how we got here on our website, or watch the kickoff video for more info. The long and short is that the systems we’ve been using for our budgeting, financial planning, accounting and HR needs haven’t met our institution’s complex requirements for several years now, and as we grow, they’re not positioned to grow with us, so it’s time for a change.
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Systems, tools and structures that are being replaced by WolfieONE:
- PeopleSoft Finance and HR
- Taleo (TMS)
- Campus Budget Module (CBM)
- Current Chart of Accounts (CoA)
- Less reliance on emails and Docusign for HR approvals
If you interact with ANY of these tools now, you’ll be using WolfieONE in the future. More specifically, if you do things like email your supervisor for certain HR requests, you will be able to eventually make those requests or changes (or have access to your employee information) in WolfieONE. Do you manage financials for your unit in Campus Budget Module or PeopleSoft? WolfieONE will be your go-to in the future. Perhaps you purchase goods or services for your unit or the University? Our new Chart of Accounts will be used for these transactions. Do you hire staff in your unit? Onboard people? Process reviews for your staff? You guessed it ... all of this (and more) will be taking place in WolfieONE.
🚨WolfieONE is not simply an IT project, or a finance project ... this is a University-wide project that will impact every single faculty and staff member in varying degrees, so we need your help to make this successful.
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3. Change is hard, we appreciate and understand this
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Our future state with WolfieONE looks bright! Here are some high-level enhancements that will undoubtedly help our teams spend less time performing manual, repetitive, time-consuming tasks and elevate the way we work to be more streamlined, easier, faster and more. Anticipated benefits include:
- Employees will be able to perform many current HR transactions in WolfieONE with self-service. For example: submitting HR requests using HR Helpdesk, rather than having to email HR for support, changing your personal contact details, emergency contacts, office location address, and so on.
- Employees and managers will be able to access and manage performance evaluations in WolfieONE (cloud based, instead of paper documents).
- Managers will also be able to view their team's request for time off (and absence types) and work schedules all in one place.
- Staff who currently send invoices to external parties will be able to create and send invoices, track receivables and generate receipts and reporting in WolfieONE instead of QuickBooks and spreadsheets.
- Financial information for units such as receivables, journal entry approvals, refunds to students, payments to departments and more, will be more transparent, simplified and easier to view.
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4. Milestones and phase updates
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There have been so many small wins in this project over the last year. A few (but not all) include:
- Campus leadership created a vision statement, guiding principles and a governance structure that has guided our efforts and been our North star during this transformation.
- The structure of our new Chart of Accounts has been finalized, which will serve as the foundation for finance, budgeting, accounting and HR in WolfieONE.
- Project leaders have identified the current systems and data that will be transferred/integrated into WolfieONE.
- Current reports from units across campus have been collected, wish lists for reporting features in the future were identified, and project leaders have identified how we can leverage Oracle’s inherent reporting tools to enhance financial and HR reporting in the future.
- Our change management team has met with so many leaders across campus and is ready to work with our Seawolf community to ensure the successful adoption of WolfieONE.
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Currently, our accounting, finance and HR project teams are transitioning from the Design to Build Phase where our partners at Deloitte will begin building WolfieONE and start to demonstrate pieces of our new system once ready. The Enterprise Performance Management (EPM) project team continues in the Design Phase where they are working to identify how WolfieONE will replace our current budgeting and financial forecasting/planning tools.
Once our project team has ensured that WolfieONE’s configurations, reporting, data conversion approaches, and system integrations meet Stony Brook’s needs, the project will transition into the Testing Phase, then Training and finally Deployment. More to come on those phases.
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Successfully navigating from current systems and processes into a future based in WolfieONE will require new knowledge, skills, and ample opportunities to engage with and learn new ways of working. This project is currently approaching the Build Phase, meaning our partners at Deloitte are building WolfieONE to meet the needs we have now, and those we anticipate in the future. Formal and tailored training will be provided, and if you’re eager to dive in ...
Oracle's Learning Explorer program from Oracle University offers free, entry-level training courses and accreditations for Oracle's entire product portfolio. It's a great place to start to learn about what an ERP is and can do. Change is incremental and gradual. Every stakeholder should have the opportunity to progress at their own pace. Without building the foundational knowledge now, it will be challenging to ramp up when we go live.
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