Let me start with wishing you all a happy 2016: The year that we will have to make some more significant steps in OCS implementation and can start picking the fruits from it.

We went fully live with the last part of phase 1 in October and it seems we were reasonably successful; for example all board reports and 2015 financial statements have all been produced fully in OCS!

On the other hand, thanks to the feedback we received from you, we are also aware that we made some mistakes and still need to repair and improve several functionalities.  A few examples:

Time Registration:

Here the OCS team made the mistake to not provide proper reports to check completeness, nor send any reminders. This might have left the impression that registration was not important or needed.

This is NOT the case: Registration is increasingly important and we need you all to continue registering your time. We can see 2015 as a trial and transition period, but 2016 must be completely, correctly and timely filled!

We will soon come with these completeness reports, to help managers steer their departments to full compliance in Time registration.  We also created activities to register RM and unfunded time to (soon more information to follow)

So please continue to register your time, and approve that of your staff!

Travel module:

In general it seems to work, but several points of attention, especially on the field of too many needed approvals (and who gives them).

Procurement:

Seems to work properly, but more information to be provided by users and an issue with good received approval to solve in the system

 Pipeline & Research Module:

The pipeline database works well (needs some more regular updating and clean up by PMOs though), the other functionalities; RM workflow, contracts etc. didn’t go live yet, but soon will.

Reports

We first had to focus on the development of general reports for Annual accounts and  main Financial controls, and now are again working on designing more reports for programs, donor reporting  and CRPs

Service desk

Initially, we didn’t have a proper monitoring system in place for the service desk, therefor some issues weren’t followed up correctly. Our excuses for that. This has been solved now, and we also just doubled the capacity of the helpdesk, so we should be able to solved and/or reply to issues much faster now. However, not all people use the helpdesk or the right Email address. So just as a reminder: Please file all your feedback and suggestions at Servicedesk@CGIAR.org.  We need your feedback to be able to improve, so don’t hesitate to send us any feedback or ideas you have. All welcome!

So, in the coming weeks we will still be focusing on solving the above issues, to properly close phase 1. Afterwards phase 2 will start where we will start introducing new workflows and functionalities, like Consultant hiring, cost reimbursement, staff planning etc. But soon more news about all of that!

Till the next update !

Kind regards

Misja Brandenburg | Director Corporate Services