More than 600 faculty and staff participated in a town hall meeting Dec. 7 to learn more about the support options available once Oracle Cloud, which is part of the SkyVU program, goes live. Oracle Cloud is the new cloud-based solution that will provide support for many of the university’s financial, administrative and research support systems.
Nicole Oeser, SkyVU program director, announced that some systems, such as the biweekly time module, will launch this month. All others will be effective Jan. 3, 2018.
“Experts say that these things don’t work when they are declared from up high,” Vice Chancellor for Information Technology John Lutz said. “Instead, they work when the entire community comes together to make a change, and that is exactly what you all have done. … Your presence here today is the embodiment of this.”
But the work will not end once Oracle Cloud goes live. Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Susan R. Wente encouraged faculty and staff to keep focusing on why the university is moving its systems to the cloud—especially when challenges arise.
“Many processes are going to change,” Wente said. “We expect that completing tasks will get a little bit harder before it gets better. But if we don’t take this step forward, we won’t see the long-term sustainable benefits.”
Change can be challenging, but Lutz reminded audience members that they still will be serving the same university mission of supporting faculty and students.
“When I was in a similar situation a few years ago, about to launch a lot of change within VUIT, the most important things we had to get right were doing the same work, not breaking anything, and supporting our customers,” Lutz said. “In this case, we will collectively be doing the same work—but perhaps a different way—and adopting and maintaining a customer mentality that our ultimate concern is for our faculty and students.”
In preparation for go-live, the team launched a new iteration of the SkyVU website on Dec. 8 to provide customized resources for each role: employees/line managers, financial unit managers, procurement requesters, HCM specialists, business unit/entity approvers, and grants financial administrators.
Among the many resources available, faculty, staff and students will have access to training modules on the Learning Exchange and Guided Learning. Guided Learning contains a searchable list that enables users to learn a new process while completing their own work.
Beginning Dec. 18, the team also will have a robust help desk staffed and trained to address any issues that cannot be answered at the local level through HCM specialists and financial unit managers:
- Call the SkyVU Support Team at (615) 322-0000.
- Submit a support ticket on the SkyVU website.
In addition to support that begins in mid-December, the SkyVU team will offer weekly support meetings that begin Jan. 8 and run through mid-February. These sessions will provide quick course corrections and one-on-one help for specific roles.
The weekly schedule will be:
- Mondays: HCM specialists and FUMs (student HCM and expense reports) in Loews, 4th Floor
- Tuesdays: HCM specialists, location TBA
- Wednesdays: FUMs, location TBA
- Thursdays: Business partners, location TBA
- Fridays: Procurement requesters in Loews, 4th Floor
For those unable to attend in person, livestreams and webinars will be available to participate remotely. More information will be forthcoming.
The SkyVU executive steering committee and G2 team include Vice Chancellors Eric Kopstain, John Lutz, Brett Sweet, Audrey Anderson and Susie Stalcup; Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs Susan R. Wente; Associate Vice Chancellor and Chief Human Resources Officer Barb Carroll; and Associate Vice Chancellor for Internal Audit Doug Horr.
Go to the SkyVU website to view the town hall in its entirety. For more information, email skyvu@vanderbilt.edu.