The following information from DFA appeared in the Nov. 19 Research Newsletter.
Procurement
Thanks to exceptional effort by the CBS2 team, the ticket backlog continues to fall. The backlog is currently at 1,052 tickets and the day when we go below 1,000 is nearing. Addressing the backlog of tickets in research continues to be CBS2’s top priority and it is currently at 151, the lowest it has ever been, with only 25 tickets currently unassigned. Over 83% of the research tickets are receiving active attention. Training is continuing for our new hires and will be finishing in the near future.
The Procurement Task Force held a meeting this week focused on back-end processing, which was joined by Deloitte as well as Oracle leads, to determine what efforts we can focus on to improve workflow. We have two more meetings with these groups in the coming weeks.
We continue to encourage everyone to continue to meet with your local CBS2 support staff to assist with your purchasing and to facilitate training of the self-service portal in Oracle. Self-service remains the fastest way to procure your critical research needs. The CBS2 team can help you better understand how to use self-service as well as the alternative ServiceNow portal.
Financial
Training for campus stakeholders continued this week as we launched the first series focused on SmartView and how it can be used to support financial reporting on campus. This session was well attended, and we look forward to continued training sessions.
DFA has continued work on our Data Integrity Project this week. One area where we need faculty partnership is in the submission of financial requests. Financial requests (e.g., purchases) made without the correct COA and POET information will compromise the integrity of the data in your contract or grant as spending will not be assigned to the right fund source. This will complicate your ability to manage your grants effectively and best support your research. Therefore, we ask that you work closely with your school financial staff as well as staff in CBS2 to ensure that your financial requests are submitted with the correct COA and POET information. Thank you for your partnership.
