Good news! We are now READY to roll out OCS in Kenya & Ethiopia!

Actually, already more than half of you ARE already live with the time sheets module, almost all Nairobi and Addis research staff has now been trained. In October/November, most of the support staff will follow.

Next step is to go live in Nairobi and Addis with the procurement, travel and pipeline modules. This  will happen as per September 21^st.  Finally, we will go live with the finance/payments modules as per October 8^th. As of that date we will completely seize to use our current SUN systems and our paperwork procedures to have all procurement, travel and payment authorization done fully on line!  The weeks between now and September 21^st we are using to design more reports and  prepare all the mid-September trainings for technical users and for Budget holders/managers, for which you most of you recently received invites, or soon will.

We took some extra time to prepare the roll out and to minimize disturbances for you. Some minor inconveniences will be unavoidable though; for example, we will need to close the Stores for a few days in September and will have a short black out period for payments early October. I will share more details with you about this pretty soon.

For Nairobi based staff: To know more about implementation process, OCS functionality now and in the future, and much more: Please join us for our OCS open day, next Friday (4/9) after the Friday morning coffee! We will have demonstrations, Info leaflets, and specialist explaining and answering any question you might have.

For regional staff: Please don’t think we forgot about you: Several regional managers will get an OCS training during upcoming IRMC: They will be taught to get basic reports out of the system and will be informed about the functionalities we will roll out in the regions 2016. So for now, nothing much will change, but in 2016 OCS will come to the regions too.

Misja Brandenburg | Director Corporate Services
Email: M.Brandenburg@cgiar.org