Turning Feedback Into Action Posted February 1, 2023

Time to resolution

Respondents shared experiences with wait and ticket resolution times.

The FSC has developed a multifaceted plan to improve overall service levels, including wait times and ticket resolution times. The plan includes expansion of the FSC team, and the addition of two new key roles.

Team Expansion to Provide Increased Support

The FSC is continuing to work on staffing as a top priority. The team has recently hired one FSC specialist position and is focused on filling the open requisition for a support analyst.

New Roles and Processes to Optimize the Team

In fall of 2021, the FSC created a new operator role and implemented a new support request ticket distribution process. This new role along with the more efficient ticket distribution process has reduced the time to first response, increased work process efficiencies and improved team productivity by effectively balancing staff workloads.

In addition, the FSC has created a new support analyst role. This new role will focus on daily FSC support requests with an emphasis on areas where there is opportunity to apply data analysis to provide more effective support in complex areas. 

The FSC has instituted Ticket Focus Fridays, scheduled as needed, to solely work on resolving support tickets. This ensures that the FSC  keeps  up to date on open support requests. On a typical Friday the FSC can resolve 2-3 days worth of support requests. 

In summary, with the established metrics to monitor these enhancements - the new roles, the additional hires, and the Ticket Focus Fridays - the FSC will continue to monitor their impact on client satisfaction levels.

Inconsistency of answers

Survey respondents expressed frustration with receiving incorrect or conflicting answers to their questions.

The FSC is implementing some changes to foster an environment of consistent training and continuous improvement.

The team has established a new training lead role, focused on enhancing FSC’s training program by implementing a more holistic, data-driven training plan that includes both proactive and reactive strategies. 

First, the training lead will work closely with the FMS knowledge manager to identify opportunities to expand the FMS knowledge base by creating knowledge articles for FSC staff as well as campus clients as systems and processes are updated. The Training Lead is responsible for training new hires and providing continuous learning and refreshers to existing FSC staff.

Also, this plan prioritizes training opportunities based on data trends in ServiceNow (the tool that powers the Stanford Services & Support portal) such as areas with low customer satisfaction levels, lagging resolution rates and opportunities identified through post-support audits for quality assurance. These proactive strategies and data-driven analyses conducted after support will help to ensure that FSC specialists are providing top quality customer service that is timely, consistent, and accurate.

The FSC has started to attend information sessions and office hours presented by business partners to reiterate information shared in department training/meetings as well as to see the questions being asked by campus clients to further the team's understanding and ability to provide consistent responses to questions asked. 

In order to address the issue, FMS embarked on a new project in 2022 to improve the invoice payment process. It includes enhancements to the existing AP hold workflow functionality and system notifications and updated AP hold types and AP hold names. The expected benefits of this project includes increased efficiency in managing AP invoices on hold and the invoice payment process. The project is currently underway.

In October 3, 2022, FMS updated notifications about the seven most common Accounts Payable (AP) invoice holds to clarify the hold’s purpose and the actions required to release the hold. The changes include two new hold notifications: one for an invoice whose purchase order is permanently closed, and one for an invoice with an invalid PTA and insufficient funds in the purchase order. Most of these hold notifications will go to both the preparer and the financial approver.

These improved notifications, along with several process improvements to how holds are generated and tracked, make it easier for departments to review and take appropriate action so that AP can release common invoice holds without requiring support from the Financial Support Center, and speed up processing and payment of invoices.
Updated Resources

A table of the updated invoice hold notifications and actions required is available in Topic Overview: Purchase Order Invoice Processing. Language in How To: Release Invoice Holds has also been updated.

Faster processing times for setting up a new supplier or payee record

• Streamline the setup process for standard supplier or payee record requests
• Develop clearer communications and Fingate guidance (including embedded diagrams, matrices and tables) that explain and support the supplier set up process, end-to-end. In April 2022, FMS published:
  • A refreshed: Topic Overview: Setting Up a New Supplier or Payee, which more clearly outlines the steps for setting up a new supplier or payee record.
  • A refreshed Topic Overview: Do Business With Stanford, provides improved guidance for prospective suppliers 
  • A new Topic Overview: Selecting a Supplier, which covers risk considerations for the supplier selection process
• Developed new supplier-facing resources, such as the new documentation table which provides the requirements for major categories of supplier and payee records and a consolidated Do Business With Stanford page.
   

Status tracking for pending supplier or payee requests

In January 2023, FMS launched new and updated status labels that are now available in the Supplier Query and Request tool for pending supplier or visitor payee requests. This technology enhancement, along with recently updated Fingate guidance, streamlines and clarifies the supplier setup process, end-to-end. Refer to the new Resource: Supplier or Visitor Payee Request Statuses Fingate page to learn about each of the new or updated status labels.

• Once a supplier request has been submitted, it is routed to the Supplier Enablement Team for review.
• The supplier team reviews the request within 7 to 9 business days. If required, a secure portal link is sent to the supplier or the authorized agent to obtain/collect any confidential data. An email update notification is sent to the requestor and the supplier/authorized agent.  
• Upon completion of the secure portal or supplier set-up, a notification is sent to the requestor that the set-up has been completed.

Clearer guidance and education for the supplier lifecycle

• Increase client outreach, including “get-to-know-you” meetings to understand client needs, user experience and supplier types that are being onboarded.
• The team hosted a successful Information Session: Overview of the Supplier Setup and Onboarding Process at Stanford where the Vendor Services team referenced and summarized Fingate guidance and policy. See Procurement Services Events for recordings and upcoming events.

Improve performance of the OBI platform, reducing run times for key dashboards and reports and ensuring timely availability of data

In response to the survey feedback, FMS and UIT have partnered on a focused effort to address multiple components of OBI performance. This started with extensive work to improve the nightly reporting builds, which take large volumes of financial data from Oracle Financials and populate the university’s Enterprise Data Warehouse, where it is available for reporting. This effort has yielded significant improvements in ensuring data is consistently available by the start of business each morning.

FMS and UIT continue to monitor and improve the nightly reporting builds as data volumes increase over time. Additionally, FMS and UIT have resolved high priority performance issues for specific dashboards such as Payroll and Labor Management (PLM) and BI Publisher reports to mitigate time-outs and improve user experience. Performance improvement for frequently used reports (i.e., Revenue and Fund Management (RFM), Consolidated Expenditure Reporting (CER)) will continue to be an area of focus with potential redesign to simplify the report interface.

Ease of use in navigating the suite of OBI Financial Reports, including locating the appropriate report among the many available options and understanding and navigating report content.  

To address concerns regarding ease of use with the OBI platform, there is a related initiative to redesign and streamline reports. This includes optimizing the prompts, views and columns for key reports. It also includes providing guided navigation to identify reports that best fit the business need, as well as make it more efficient to navigate report content.

FMS has completed the discovery and prototype for a new reporting directory, including a searchable index of the most commonly used OBI Financial reports with an interface similar to the Fingate Buying and Paying Guide. Please see the Searchable OBI Financial Reporting Directory released in January 2023 and provide your feedback.

Lastly, there will be initiatives to deliver new report capabilities and functionality. This includes dashboard reports that combine key data to reduce report preparation time and provide new insights. New reports identified in survey feedback that have been delivered include:

• Salary, Fringe, and Indirect Cost by Employee, which merges actuals and commitments to provide fiscal year projections of total cost by employee.
• Purchase Order and Related AP Invoices Report, which shows details of POs and invoices in the same report.
• A new ad hoc subject area, Fund and Expenditure Management Reporting (FEM), that combines key data from CER, like expenditures and commitments and from RFM, like balances, receipts, and transfers, along with budgets for both. This supports the creation of high-level financial management reporting directly in the OBI FEM subject area without needing to export CER and RFM data to merge in external spreadsheets.
• FMS and UIT are working on additional reporting for the next enhancement release cycles including a new Asset Transfer Report targeted for release in March/April 2023. FMS is also working on the design of a new Budget Variance report with visualizations.

Stanford Travel conducts extensive campus outreach including: 

• Bi-annual Travel Forum, most recently held in June 2022
• Quarterly virtual  information sessions - See event calendar for recordings and upcoming information sessions 
• Quarterly travel newsletter, distributed to over 20,000 Stanford travelers and arrangers
• Customized department training (submit training request).
• Timely updates on the #FMS- stanford-travel Slack channel. Join here #fms-stanford-travel
• Popular travel desk guide clarifying the changes to the Travel Booking Policy (codified by Global Risk) and promoting the benefits of the various booking channels

A key consideration when comparing fares is to note that Stanford Travel doesn’t display highly restrictive airfares such as Basic Economy or consolidator fares which are highly restrictive and not recommended for university-sponsored travel. Stanford Travel already has many measures in place  to offer competitive rates through the designated booking channels including: 

• Stanford-negotiated airfares offering up to 25% discount on economy and business class fares
• Stanford-negotiated discounts on local properties in the Palo Alto vicinity, as well as, access to additional inventory and discounted rates through Egencia’s partnership with Expedia and AmexGBT 
• Direct access to United.com via United Corporate Direct; additional airline(s) to be added in 2023
• Fare re-shopping technology that re-books reservations if lower fares become available 
• Egencia offers a flight price guarantee program called Egencia Promise. 
• StudentUniverse offers student discounts for students under the age of 26 
• Added new booking channel - Key Travel - with flexible academic airfares
• Added additional corporate benefits such as loyalty status matches and quarterly promotions. 

Business Expense has been endeavoring over the last year to refine and clarify existing policies to reduce  “the grey areas” that cause confusion and drive increased administrative burden. To do so, FMS has analyzed  questions and feedback about policy and identified areas for improvement. This has led to numerous policy updates, for example those for ground transportation, hotel and lodging and meal reimbursement. To support the rollout of these improvements, we have provided regular virtual events and ongoing communication to ensure these updates get to the individuals who need to know.  Along with making policies easier to interpret, FMS also recognizes there are opportunities to make the Business Expense process itself less of an administrative burden for departments. Below are active initiatives in Business Expense to address this:

• The Introduction to Expense Requests training course will be updated in the first half of 2023.
  • Incorporate changes to process: including beneficiary section, booking method requirements, etc
  • Update links and references to additional guidance
  • Streamline the course to provide trainees only what they need
  • Update training style to something more current that better incorporates how people learn
• The team continues to refine a new Oracle tool that allows Business Expense auditors to proactively identify and fix  “stuck” transactions.
  • Removes the need for campus to reach out to check on status of a transaction
  • Greatly accelerates the payment process on those transactions
• The Walk Me tool  has been identified as a possible solution to the campus need for additional guidance on the Reimbursement Process 
  • Requirements gathering in PY23/24
  • implementation in PY24 

• Identify pain points for preparers
• Limit circumstances in which Beneficiary information is required
• Improve the intuitiveness of the beneficiary data entry process
• Discovery to identify potential improvements in PY23
• Implementation in PY24