Q: Why did BYU select PeopleSoft?

A: BYU's software consultant recommended three vendors who could provide commercial solutions to our administrative software needs. PeopleSoft led the list in this recommendation. In addition, the Church had just completed a major long-term contract with PeopleSoft to solve its own administrative software needs, and BYU was able to make effective use of this very favorable contract. President Bateman was very involved in the Church's decision as Presiding Bishop, and is supportive of BYU's implementation efforts. PeopleSoft meets a number of our open systems requirements: it runs on a variety of hardware platforms and database engines. In addition, it became apparent that PeopleSoft is very interested in serving the university market, and has undertaken several significant development projects designed to support university activities. A number of these projects are in their early stages, and will not even be available to BYU for several years.

Q: Are there other major customers of PeopleSoft?

A: PeopleSoft has become the premier client- server vendor in the world. There are many large commercial customers, including a number of multi-national companies using PeopleSoft. There are also currently about 50 university customers, including UC-Berkeley, UC-San Francisco, Cornell, University of Michigan, Ohio State University, University of Wisconsin, University of Utah, University of Wyoming as well as a variety of smaller colleges and universities. BYU is spearheading the development of a Special Interest Group ("SIG") of these higher education customers. We're learning from them, and they're learning from us! BYU is actually one of the implementation leaders in our particular applications. It's an exciting time for all of us. PeopleSoft has built most of its applications around multi-currency processing, which opens up many new possibilities for major companies. Although this won't be a major feature for BYU, it will be helpful in some instances. It certainly is important to the Church, which anticipates using PeopleSoft worldwide for many of its administrative needs.

Q: Who is pushing for PeopleSoft at BYU?

A: Financial Services has the initial application needs, joined by the Purchasing and Receiving offices. Other PeopleSoft applications would be in the domain of Human Resources, Admissions & Records, Housing, Alumni and others.

Q: Why did BYU start with the general ledger, purchasing, accounts payable and receiving solutions?

A: These systems were scheduled to be replaced, due to obsolescence. The other financial systems "weren't broke" and could be retained. The Financial Computer Support technical staff was able to port all of its other systems from the mainframe to Unix platforms, using replacement software provided by Computer Associates in their native development language. The PeopleSoft solution made the most sense for the general ledger and the purchasing/receiving/accounts payable systems.

Q: What's the real timetable for these changes? We haven't heard much?

A: We will begin putting new purchase transactions into the purchasing/receiving/ accounts payable system on April 7th. The old system will continue to run as long as necessary, but should not be required after June or July. The general ledger will probably take over for the old system on September 1, although we are looking at some alternatives around that date.

Q: I hear that the new systems will look a lot like the old systems. Can't we improve on what we've been doing all these years?

A: We have intentionally decided to make the conversion as simple as possible. Our primary objective is to make sure our administrative functions continue into the Fall semester without undue stress on the campus at this very busy time. However, PeopleSoft offers a broad variety of improvements, which we will introduce to the campus and use appropriately in the not-too-distant future. For example, PeopleSoft comes delivered with features which enable electronic "work flows", including elimination of much of the paper which creates campus transactions, review and approval of activities by supervisory personnel, etc. An example is the ability to submit on-line purchase requisitions. PeopleSoft offers excellent interfaces with other desktop software solutions, so that data can easily be transferred between systems. PeopleSoft offers a unique "tree" system for summarizing data in a wide variety of ways for different purposes. In addition, PeopleSoft has excellent report writing tools. PeopleSoft provides new releases of its software on an annual basis, and some very exciting things are scheduled for future releases. PeopleSoft systems will not look like old systems. The PeopleSoft systems use a graphical user interface.

Q: Surely some changes will be apparent immediately. What are they? How do these relate to some kind of new "purchasing card" I've heard about?

A: The campus shouldn't notice much difference initially with the purchasing/ receiving/accounts payable system. However the general ledger will involve a significant change in the accounting codes (or "chart fields" and "chart block", as PeopleSoft calls them). Financial Services staff will begin working with all campus offices in April to explain these changes, as they specifically apply to accounts and object codes you use today. Although there are several approaches, including a "speed type" or short-hand method of entering chart block information, it will all take some getting used to, and will probably be painful for a while. In addition, we plan to start distributing financial reports (budget reports, etc.) electronically. This will take some getting used to, and we anticipate that we will need to do a fair amount of tailoring to make the reports as useful to you as possible.

PeopleSoft works on relational databases, such as Oracle, Informix, Sybase, DB2, etc. We have elected to start on Informix's database, because of preexisting campus relationships with this company. The expanded chart block is broken into smaller chart fields as follows:

• Business Unit [5 digits, BYU will use 3]: Identifies the primary accounting entity. BYU plans to use one simply called "BYU", which will be the default business unit. It is possible that additional business units will be added in the future.
• Budget Year [4 digits, data entry requires 2; this resolves the "Year 2000" dilemma being faced by many businesses and some of our systems]: Matches expense transactions with their appropriate budgets and/or revenues.
• Account [6 digits, BYU will use 5]: Like the typical accounting "chart of accounts", and BYU's current "object codes" and "account control codes".
• Fund [5 digits, BYU will use 2]: Like the leading digit of today's account codes ("0-", "2-", "6-", etc.)
• Organization [6 digits, BYU will use 6]: Like our current 6-digit account codes. At conversion, we will have one of these for each of today's account codes, except that we can now combine balance sheet and income statement transactions under one Organization code. Also, today's sponsored research projects ("5-") will use the Project chart field rather than Organization.
• Program [5 digits, BYU will use 4]: This chart field is generally being reserved for the Administration's definitions, as required for reporting to the Department of Education. May also be used for future costing analysis directed by the Administration.
• Subclass [5 digits, BYU will use 5]: This optional chart field is available to campus departments to use in further breaking down transactions into local information needs. For example, transactions could be identified to a specific professor or course, if desired.
• Project/Grant [15 digits, BYU will use 8]: Initially, this chart field will be used for sponsored research projects. However, there are other potential uses, which we will work with departments to identify. This chart field has some additional budget controls and other features not associated with the other chart fields.
• Speed Type [10 digits, BYU will use 8]: This is a short-hand way of entering some information into other chart fields. By keying these eight digits, the related Fund, Organization, Program and Project/Grant chart fields can be automatically populated.

The combined use of these chart fields represents the power of relational databases. Useful information can be extracted by combining the chart field information as required by the information users. In addition, each chart field can be sorted or organized in any number of ways using "trees."

Another major interesting change which everyone will eventually notice is that we hope to eliminate a lot of the "blanket purchase order" and LPD-type transactions by issuing "purchasing cards" to all of the areas where this makes sense. The purchasing cards will be standard Visa cards, which can be used for making small and repetitive transactions, like many of you make now. Each card can be tailored to the specific needs and restrictions of our departments. Purchasing and Financial Services will be visiting your offices over the next several months to introduce this product, after it has been tested in some key campus offices.

Q: How come only the ASB people have been involved so far in learning about PeopleSoft and making all the decisions?

A: The decisions, so far, have all been "central office" decisions: how many "business units" are appropriate for BYU; what is the minimal change in our "chart block" which will still meet our campus-wide accounting needs; how does the system process journal entries and create reports? The system skeleton is essentially in place and we're sure that we can successfully bring these systems up on deadline. Next we want a lot of input from the campus on how to flesh out the systems and make them useful to you. That's why we'll start visiting your offices in April, and ask you to help us make sure the system can be made to meet your needs.

Those areas which needed to be involved so far have been heavily involved. Purchasing and Receiving have been working very closely with Financial Services in structuring the system to meet their needs as they serve the campus community. Everyone's time is coming! Before long, you'll know more and be more deeply involved than you may want to be!!

Q: You told us that we would have to replace our desktop computers with very powerful Pentium-grade computers. Now you're saying that we could get by with less powerful machines. What gives?

A: We initially expected that many of our campus offices would have to actually install desktop portions of the PeopleSoft systems to make these applications work. PeopleSoft is changing its approach to facilitate interfacing its applications with software written for the Internet. There will be some Internet access when the PeopleSoft GL system comes up this fall. However, the Pentium-grade decision is still not a bad one, because of the various applications we see in the near future. PeopleSoft traditionally has required a "fat client", which means that a lot of the processing is done in the desktop machine, which then has to interface back to the server. This process causes a tremendous strain on the campus network, as well as additional expertise and maintenance required to maintain the desktop machines. Future releases will move toward a "thin client" architecture. It looks like we can deliver all of the necessary services to most users using Internet and e-mail technology, although some of this will evolve over time.

Q: What about future releases of the software?

A: We will be implementing version 5.1 of the software. The next version, release 6.0, will be available several months after our initial conversions. This new release requires Microsoft Windows 95 or NT operating systems. This gives us another reason to want most offices to communicate with PeopleSoft over the Internet: it won't matter if you have 32-bit Pentium machines or Macintoshes, since the Internet communication all looks the same to the server. We expect that each annual release will bring new features and make the systems more user-friendly over time. PeopleSoft is making significant changes in its architecture over the next few releases, including use of the Tuxedo product (made in Utah County) to allow for more efficient use of distributed activities. The whole "work flow" process changes in Release 6.0, and we are very interested in these new capabilities. In addition, some significant university-specific new systems won't be available until maybe Release 7.0 a year from now. We are very active in working with the other university customers and PeopleSoft to make this software as good as it should be!

Q: What happens if things don't go well?

A: We expect the usual types of problems, and we're prepared to deal with them. However, we know it won't be totally painless! We've worked with consultants, PeopleSoft technicians and other campuses to learn all we can about disaster avoidance. In addition, we may need to ask for patience in the early months to make sure that all of the operating problems get solved, in priority order. Your observations and help in identifying and solving problems will be greatly appreciated. We've tried to think of everything, but there will be unexpected surprises that we'll just have to work through.

Q: What can I do in my office to learn more about PeopleSoft and get involved with this project?

A: Welcome the Financial Services representatives who will visit your office during the next two months. Ask lots of questions. Show the team what you currently have to do to track your financial transactions, budget balances, etc., and tell them what would be helpful to you in getting your job done. Attend training sessions which will be announced later this spring. Visit this Website periodically for updates and additional information.