Bold Thinking for a Global Good through Cloud Technology!
Posted on behalf of Bill Guerrero and Hayley Harris.
Bold Thinking for a Global Good through Cloud Technology!
Why are we upgrading Parnassus to the Cloud?
Innovation is a core value that enables us to remain forward thinking, nimble, and adaptable to social and technological change. Throughout 2019, our colleagues in Human Resources have focused on successfully migrating to cloud technology as a part of a larger strategy to deliver smarter, faster and more reliable people services. They have worked to keep the Ithaca College community engaged on the status of their work while focusing on delivering additional capabilities to our faculty, staff and students. In addition to this migration, the Finance team is preparing to migrate its support model to the Cloud. The purpose of this communication is to answer some preliminary questions on what this change will affect and how we support the Ithaca College community.
What is the difference between IC Finance Cloud and IC HR Cloud?
The IC HR Cloud is all about people. Deployed by the Office of Human Resources, this platform allows Ithaca to recruit top faculty and staff, reliably process our payroll, consistently deliver relevant skills and competency based training, quickly react to compensation changes for our market and proactively manage team performance. Our IC Finance Cloud, once deployed by the Office of Business and Finance, will provide more streamlined accounting, greater predictability in budgeting, transparency in procurement, faster execution on contracts, easier travel expense management, and better overall enterprise performance management across the institution. Both cloud solutions will align with our values by helping the college streamline its operations to better serve the campus community. Once fully deployed, both cloud solutions will become a seamless, interconnected enterprise platform.
What do we have today and why change?
Our current technology is called E-Business Suite, internally known as Parnassus. This product has its origins in financial software written over 30 years ago. With this antiquity come inherent limitations, administrative and operational inefficiencies, and the need to utilize additional software products to supplement the functions of Parnassus. Over time, these additional products have increased the cost of supporting our institution without adding additional value. Our move to the Cloud will provide capabilities to our team which exceed the functionality of Parnassus, BudgetPak, IC Marketplace, EZPay, and the current travel expense forms combined. Additionally, migrating to IC Finance Cloud will allow us to realize synergies between IC HR Cloud and IC Finance Cloud. In short, this move will mean one secure platform, one code, and one version of the truth.
When will we migrate to IC Finance Cloud?
The anticipated go-live date is summer 2020. Testing with campus constituents is anticipated to begin in March 2020. In the meantime, the Office of Business and Finance is working with consultants from Drivestream Inc. to convert existing data to IC Finance Cloud.
How will IC Finance Cloud differ from Parnassus?
Throughout this process we have embraced “sustainability” as a guiding core value. For us, adopting institutional strategies that offer ecological and resource-based sustenance to the people and places of Ithaca College to ensure its futurity, is critically important. With this in mind, a summary of changes is as follows:
- New cloud-based interface offering improvements to the user experience.
- Consolidate multiple software solutions into a single enterprise platform:
- Eliminate BudgetPak and use the budgeting tools within IC Finance Cloud.
- Eliminate IC Marketplace and use the procurement and contracting tools within IC Finance Cloud.
- Eliminate EZPay and use payment initiation tools within IC Finance Cloud.
- Replace current travel expense forms with expense management tools within IC Finance Cloud.
- Updated chart of accounts. In order to provide a flexible and scalable framework, the college is expanding its account structure from 21 digits to 28 digits. The Office of Business and Finance will assist departments with converting Parnassus accounts from the old 21-digit structure to the new 28-digit structure. Refer to a separate forthcoming correspondence regarding the conversion of chart of accounts to the new 28-digit structure.
Be alert for further correspondence regarding the migration from Parnassus to IC Finance Cloud.
Thanks to all of those working to make these changes possible. We appreciate your patience throughout this process.
Bill Guerrero
Vice President of Finance and Administration
Hayley Harris
Vice President of Human Resources and Planning
