Stellenbosch University's Rectorate agreed for the SUNFin project's go-live date to be extended from 4 January 2021 to 1 July 2021 to ensure a seamless transition from the current financial system to the new Oracle Cloud Financials (OCF) system.
“Despite many challenges during the past few months, the project team has made significant progress on the project," says Chief Director Finance, Manie Lombard. The team is currently finalising critical business decisions and changes to business policies that are required by the OCF application. SU data is also being cleaned before the final cutover and data load.
Furthermore, the team is developing integration solutions to ensure that the required SU peripheral systems can 'talk to' the OCF application. Visions, our implementation partner, is focusing on transferring knowledge of the OCF system to the SU finance subject matter experts (SMEs).
According to Manie, the SUNFin team has adopted a unique agile way of working on projects in establishing cross-functional teams to develop the integrations of peripheral systems to OCF. “They are instilling a culture of using templates, documenting findings and sharing information. The team established a set of values which they live by, as well as adopted a formal change management approach to manage the people element of change systematically."
The project team is busy preparing the SU data for the last practice data load and system configuration before reviewing the third and final iteration of OCF in early 2021, followed by user acceptance testing (UAT) in March 2021.
Manie says they will inform staff about features of the new SUNFin solution and key changes to the financial processes and policies on planned roadshows in April 2021.
End-user training will commence in May until mid-June 2021. “We will communicate cutover processes and dates to relevant staff members well in advance."
Please send your questions or comments regarding the project to sunfin@sun.ac.za. For more information, please visit www.sun.ac.za/sunfin.
