Box Up the Files: Improve Operations with SAP[R].

For the accounts payable department at Los Angeles Community College District (LACCD), the largest community college system in the United States, paying a single vendor can take as much as four hours and involve as many as five staff members. Stacks of paper files, logbooks and typewriters seem circa 1969, not 2001.

Tedious data entry, slow manual processes and delayed payments frustrate employees and challenge administrators. Countless hours are wasted tracking down information from file cabinets, drawers and folders. Inaccurate paychecks affect everyone from the chancellor to clerical staff. Some vendors hesitate to do business with the institution because of a poor payment record.

But this will change starting in July 2002, when the LACCD deploys SAP software solutions.

Thanks to the leadership at LACCD, the community college system currently is implementing technology solutions from SAP Public Services, Inc. to better manage financial, purchasing, human resources, procurement and other business processes. Goodbye, hand-typed checks and carbon-copy invoices. Hello, an integrated and comprehensive administrative system.

Streamlining processes

SAP's software and business solutions will help to make LACCD one of the best-run community college systems in the country. Employees today find it difficult to perform their jobs efficiently and effectively and District leaders struggle to obtain basic records; limited technology constrains them. With SAP, however, all LACCD employees will have access to the exact information, applications and services they need to complete their assignments.

SAP financial and human resources solutions will help LACCD employees to integrate all aspects of the institutions' administrative offices -- from academic departments and the job placement center to the business office and beyond. Integration ensures that all essential data and information needs to be entered only once to remain accessible to everyone involved in the administrative process. With the reduction in data entry and paper pushing, accuracy and integrity of information will improve greatly across the LACCD community.

For Dr. Rob Alworth, chief information officer at LACCD, the integration capability of SAP software solutions proved to be a strong selling point. He noted, "SAP provided a comprehensive, integrated, technologically sophisticated application suite that appealed both to our functional users and our technology support staff."

"When the new software is fully operational, our colleges will have the information they need to serve students more effectively and conduct their day-to-day operations more efficiently," continued Alworth. "It will be a huge step forward for our organization. The project also affords a golden opportunity to re-engineer some outdated processes and policies."

District finds success

Organized in 1969, the district serves a population of several million residents across an area encompassing 884 square miles in metropolitan Los Angeles. Together the nine colleges that comprise the District enroll over 120,000 students district wide and employ approximately 6,400 full- and part-time employees.

In Spring 2001, LACCD chose SAP to supply an integrated administration system.

"In reality, there are two different tiers of software providers. The top-tier companies like SAP focus on process while the second tier companies focus on functions," said Dr. Mark Drummond, chancellor of LACCD. "We selected SAP because it has the better developed, more superior product; it is not business-as-usual software."

According to Drummond, many community colleges have not significantly reengineered their systems; rather they attempt to enhance or augment their technological capabilities through software that supports existing processes and functions.

Typically cost has been a determinant factor in technology decisions for institutions -- they select the lowest-cost solution that will complete core functions -- pay employees and register students. LACCD, however, focused on an enterprise-wide, process-oriented approach that involves the entire institution.

Managing change

Change management is the linchpin to a successful system implementation and deployment. Implementing the new, best business practices will require LACCD employees and leaders to make significant changes in their traditional working attitudes and behavior. The organization must radically adjust the way it has done business for 30 years.

LACCD will succeed in its modernization effort largely thanks to the commitment and attention that the LACCD leadership and community have dedicated to change management. Right from the start, LACCD involved the larger community -- not by paying lip service to engaging employees but by truly listening to their input and guidance.

Throughout the implementation process, LACCD has been hosting -- and will continue to host -- training sessions, workshops and events focused on educating the community about SAP software and upcoming changes in operational processes. Newsletters and discussion groups invite the LACCD to share their views, concerns and excitement about the SAP project.

Most importantly, the LACCD leaders recognize people's anxiety about job security and their fear that automation will mean the elimination of their positions. Chancellor Drummond promises that while roles may change and new skills must be learned, jobs at LACCD will not disappear. In fact, by reducing the need to shuffle paper, and by automating more parts of the process, the SAP system will help to reduce repetitive and routine clerical tasks, making employees' jobs easier and more enjoyable.

A positive outlook

The accounts payable department at LACCD processes 30,000 vendor warrants or invoices a year manually. For Rhonda Budnick, a consultant who is assisting with the SAP implementation, and for the other members of the accounts payable staff, the process in place today is "sheer misery." One person prepares a voucher request, another batches all the requests, and a third submits them to have warrants assigned. Information about the invoices are typed in the warrant register, a glorified checkbook, and compiled into the daily report of warrants drawn that day, prepared by hand by yet another person. Once audited, the checks are sent to vendors.

Finally, to end the long, drawn-out process, accounts payable sends copies of the vendors' checks to the district's accounting department where the payment information is entered into a database. This is the only computerized aspect of the accounts payable process. (Budnick did mention that while the 35,000 financial aid payments made to students are computerized and that some of the colleges also use a stand-alone, nonintegrated purchasing system, the majority of the vendor checks are processed manually.)

The accounts payable employees eagerly anticipate the full deployment of SAP solutions when information will be literally at their fingertips. No longer will they have to track down co-workers for information from one of the six or eight binders that clutter their desks. These employees look forward to having the tools to better serve vendors by improving the timeliness of LACCD payments. As SAP solutions operate seamlessly with vendors and state agencies, some vendors even will be paid immediately by electronic funds transfers, thereby eliminating the need for checks.

Currently in the payroll office, Michael Phillips works with an antiquated and inflexible payroll system that LACCD inherited when it became independent from the Los Angeles Unified School District in 1969. While the 30-year-old system automates most of the payroll process such as recording time, attendance, vacation, benefits and employee information, much of the day-to-day processing such as payroll deductions and reconciliation, is still a manual exercise. According to Phillips, an average of 50 to 80 checks a month must be processed manually, taking a couple hours just to complete one check.

In the next few months, LACCD will begin to implement SAP human resources solutions. The project should be completed in approximately two years. Part of the SAP human resources solutions will streamline payroll process by automating every aspect and facilitating stringent report writing to ensure a more efficient personnel department at LACCD.

Phillips in particular looks forward to Employee Self-Service, which will empower LACCD employees to access segments of their own personnel files to update their personal information, review their payroll and benefits, and manage other key information. By having the ability to access and adjust their own personnel data, LACCD employees will no longer need to request changes with little cards; the same little cards that Phillips says tend to stack up on his desk. "Employee Self-Service," acoording to Phillips, "is only one of the number of ways SAP can make life simpler."

Copyright[C] 2001 SAP AG. SAP, the SAP logo, mySAP.com, mySAP, and all other SAP products and services mentioned herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP AG in Germany and several other countries.

MALCOLM WOODFIELD VICE PRESIDENT OF EDUCATION BUSINESS UNIT SAP PUBLIC SERVICES, INC.