Did GASB Listen to Its Constituents

You have a vintage financial system and a host of loosely coupled administrative systems that have been developed over time. Sure, they do the job, but with each passing day they've become ever more difficult and costly to maintain. User demand for real-time information and timely financial reporting continues to mount. Everywhere you look in the media, articles and advertisements are praising the benefits of e-commerce, enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems and the web, and you don't want to be left behind. You know that e-commerce provides an immediate payoff by streamlining the entire purchasing process and reducing costs. Requisitioners are empowered with self-service purchasing capabilities so they can search internal and external supplier catalogs via the web to get the best price and acquire goods and services directly Manual paper processes can be eliminated with electronic workflow and electronic approvals, and requests for quotations can be posted on the web to increase competition and permit vendors to record their bids. The results are astounding-an accelerated procurement cycle and reduced costs. When you couple e-commerce with an ERP system, the benefits are even greater. An ERP solution will enable the many component subsystems comprising your agency's overall business system, such as financial, human resources, supply chain and procurement, to talk to one another because they will be integrated. These systems will use the same data and share information-processes that occur in one subsystem will automatically kick off dependent and related processes in another. By implementing a web-based software solution via your agency's intranet, you will not have to be concerned with maintaining software on each user's desktop. In addition, you'll be able to move the technical aspects of software operation off the desktop and into the data center on the network, giving your users even greater capabilities. The payback in reduced maintenance and administrative costs will be felt immediately. Out With Old, In With New So, where do you start? What's the best approach? How can you reduce the risks inherent in making these dramatic changes? Success will not come easy, and perhaps not at all, unless you take a few basic steps. First, you and your team must truly embrace an "out with the old, in with the new mind-set." But how can you make this kind of commitment when you know very little about how your business processes will change after you implement an ecommerce solution or an integrated ERP system? It's one thing to say that you're ready for change,but quite another when you recognize that you and your team neither have a comprehensive nor common understanding of these new solutions. You may believe that the road to success is to commence a complete business process re-engineering (BPR) project to define how you will do business tomorrow. The problem is, how can you be sure that your thinking will not be influenced by all of the many business processes you follow today? Besides, how can you and your team truly change the paradigm, unless you can picture aiid define how the new ERP, e-commerce and web-based systems will change your business processes? Developing a comprehensive set of new financial management and business requirements for your agency is also fraught with danger. How can you be certain that you will not wind up with merely a "wish list" that makes various groups in your agency content, but when combined into an overall system does not culminate in the best system for your agency? Form a Vision, Identify Objectives While it will be important to keep an open mind as you proceed, you will nevertheless have to form a vision for your agency along with some basic goals. Consider what you would like to achieve in say, six months, and a year or two from now. What areas and processes of your agency's business are crying out for change? …