The One Corporate System (OCS) project is an initiative of nine CGIAR Centres and the Consortium Office to implement a common business information system for managing: human resources and payroll, finance and logistics (travel authorization and expenditure reporting, procurement and inventory, fixed assets management), research and project management, planner (budgeting) and project costing and billing.  The system is based on a software platform known as Agresso Business World (ABW), supplied by UNIT4. OCS will replace many of the current systems in place for example, Sun Systems, HR4U etc.

Isaac Kihara is the OCS project manager at ILRI.  He oversees day to day activities of the OCS project staff and the consulting company (GCON4) to ensure the project is implemented well. Kihara works closely with ILRI’s key business users in finance, people and organizational development unit, procurement and research programs. The key business users in these units are an important resource to Isaac and his team since they are more experienced, have in-depth knowledge of the business processes and procedures currently being used in their functional areas of working.  Isaac’s wish is to see the OCS project rolled out smoothly at ILRI this year with end users appreciating the value of the system and having an easy time using it.

Joseph Kimani joined ILRI as an Information Communication Technology (ICT) business data manager in June 2014. He plays a technical support role in the implementation of the OCS project. His main duties are: supporting the implementation of the Agresso Business World system for ILRI as part of the One Corporate System project (OCS), guiding the key business users on how to capture and map data and ensure all regional, country and project offices manage their data to the agreed standards. Joseph also ensures that the data collected is clean and matches the agreed standards and coding. Once data has been loaded into the system, he analyzes it to assess its quality and correctness, and identify missing data. Joseph, who is so passionate about what the system will do once it is implemented, says he is lucky to be working on a project that hopefully will improve ILRI’s coordination across projects and activities.

Bruck Tassew Joined ILRI as a business systems specialist in January 2014. He is based in Addis Ababa with frequent travel to ILRI Nairobi campus where the system is being developed. Bruck is the link between the key business users and the project implementation experts. His roles in the OCS project range from assessing the business process of ILRI, assisting in the implementation of Agresso Business World for ILRI as part of the OCS project and serving as a key contact for OCS-related activities, and other issues in business applications for the Addis office in coordination with the OCS team. Bruck ensures that the agreed functional requirements of the key business users and process experts are implemented in Agresso, reports design and implementation of any required reports from the key business users, and organizes data collection and migration from old systems into Agresso. Bruck envisions a system where ideally all the requirements of the key business users are met and the system is rolled out as soon as possible.
The OCS team strongly hopes that once the system is rolled out, it will improve processes, program management, accuracy, collaboration, information sharing and reporting, among others.

The team works from the training block (former GAIN office), on the ILRI Nairobi campus, and in the ICT building (formerly Binyam’s office) in Addis Ababa. Their office is open to anyone who wants to learn more about the project, any time.

If you have any question(s) about OCS, you can also send them to: AskILRIOCS@cgiar.org.

Find more information about this team and other people involved in the OCS project at: http://ilri-ocs.wikispaces.com/Who_is_OCS.

Visit the OCS wiki for more information about OCS generally.