From: "Walker, Sean C" Date: Saturday, July 3, 2021 at 4:22 PM To: "Gross, Louis J" Subject: Re: Focus Group Meeting with Accenture Dr. Gross: Thank you for the comments. I’ve heard very little about this move prior to her email… so I will be reading your report for additional context. Thank you! Get Outlook for iOS From: Gross, Louis J Sent: Saturday, July 3, 2021 3:20:06 PM To: Walker, Sean C ; Pourmotabbed, Tayebeh ; Donaldson, Martin E ; Patterson, David A ; Starling, Anderson Milton ; Garland, Tammy ; Crawford, Elizabeth ; Richey, Phyllis ; Cathey, Robert Cc: Gross, Louis J Subject: Re: Focus Group Meeting with Accenture Sean et al., Thanks for the heads-up. It is a positive step that faculty are being asked for input at this stage. This system (ERP - Enterprise Resource Planning System) is going to be a hellacious mess no matter how it happens. These systems are complex attempts to meet lots of different goals. I had discussions over a year ago with System CFO David Miller about the cost when I served on the UTK Advisory Board. It is going to be a huge new expense that will be charged to the campuses, though at the time David said a large portion of the costs would be covered by the System. How they will do so isn’t clear given their limited revenue. I lived through and regularly complained about the build out of the IRIS system, which was purchased on the cheap after ORNL built it (it is an SAP system). Big mistake – it took about a decade to get to something like reasonable functionality. There are now vendors who push integrated systems but these typically are built to general objectives and meeting the particular needs of individual campuses is not very easy ( they consider it creeping featurism). In the presentation to the Board on this (June 2019) it was made very clear that any new system would not include the flexibility that the current system has. I composed a report in response to David Miller’s presentation – it is posted at http://lgross.utk.edu/Senate/CommentsUTBoardPresentationsJune2019LJGross.pdf My main point is that software should not drive policy and unfortunately these systems constrain policy. I will send a note directly to Tammy Lemon pointing out my remarks from 2 years ago. I can attend the meeting on 7/30 or 8/3 but not 7/29. Stay well, Lou -- Louis J. Gross (he, him, his) Chancellor’s Professor and Alvin and Sally Beaman Distinguished Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and Mathematics Director Emeritus, National Institute for Mathematical and Biological Synthesis (NIMBioS.org) Director, The Institute for Environmental Modeling University of Tennessee - Knoxville President, 2006-2007, 2021-2022, UTK Faculty Senate Past-President, 2003-2005, Society for Mathematical Biology http://lgross.utk.edu/ From: "Walker, Sean C" Date: Friday, July 2, 2021 at 9:27 AM To: "Gross, Louis J" , "Pourmotabbed, Tayebeh" , "Donaldson, Martin E" , "Patterson, David A" , "Starling, Anderson Milton" , "Garland, Tammy" , "Crawford, Elizabeth" , "Richey, Phyllis" , "Cathey, Robert" Subject: Focus Group Meeting with Accenture My Fellow UFC Members: I was contacted this week by Tammy Lemon, ERP Project Manager with the UT System Department of Technology Solutions, about an opportunity for our group to have a voice in an upcoming transition within the UT System. To best explain it, I am going to copy and paste some of her email as I am not an IT person and I believe she explains it better than I do: In advance of selecting a new system to replace IRIS, UT has contracted with Accenture to take a look at the opportunities for streamlining our human resource, finance, and payroll processes. We would like to engage the UFC and members of the Employee Relations Advisory Board in a focus group facilitated by Accenture to provide you with insight on the project and get input on your experiences with employee self-service in IRIS. Things like leave requests, pay statements, and W2s. The BPR project team has hosted several of these sessions over the last six weeks or so. Our most recent focus group was with departmental business managers within colleges and research centers across the system to discuss the broad set of human resource, finance, and payroll processes they support. The consulting firm, Accenture, is wanting to engage us in a focus group session to get faculty feedback on what we need from this system. I asked if we could do this during our regularly scheduled meeting in August and, unfortunately, the answer was no because the contract will need to be signed before our meeting. Because I don’t want to have to call additional meetings, I wanted to poll you all for interest to attend the focus group session. It would not be an official UFC meeting but would be available time for any interested individuals to join and ask questions/provide feedback. The dates and times available are as follows (Times are listed in EST and the session would take up to 60-minutes): Friday, 7/30 between 9-12 (preferred by Accenture) Thursday, 7/29 between 10:30-1 Tuesday, 8/3 11-12 Please let me know if you are interested in attending this focus group session and which days/times work for you. I will then send a list to Tammy so that it can be arranged. Please let me know if you have any questions. Thank you for all that you do! Sincerely, Sean Walker PhD, MBA Chair, University Faculty Council (2021-2022 AY) Past-President, UT Martin Faculty Senate (2021-2022 AY) Professor of Behavioral Management College of Business and Global Affairs University of Tennessee at Martin Non-Attorney Mediator, Rule 31 Practitioner Licensed Minister, UPCI "Focus on your blessings, the rest will take care of itself!" Skyhawks fly high because Skyhawks fly TOGETHER!