What's New with OBI?
OBI: Expenditure Reporting Steps Up
We are nearing a major milestone in the efforts to improve financial reporting at Stanford through the Evolve Financial Reporting (EFR) program. The program's tool, Oracle Business Intelligence (OBI), makes data easier to use, understand, and interpret. EFR is enabling university staff to respond to information requests more rapidly, and with confidence in the results.
So far, the EFR program has delivered Payroll and Labor Management reporting and Expense Requests and Stanford Credit Card reporting.
What's Next: Consolidated Expenditure Reporting (CER) will be released in March 2016. CER will include new and powerful reporting and analysis capabilities, designed in collaboration with people from across the university. It will cover expenditure statement-reporting that now is delivered through reports such as the ReportMart3 279 and 285. (Here's the full list of affected RM3 reports. Note that the RM3 reports won't be retired until after year-end close.)
We'll have more information in the coming weeks and months about the March rollout of CER. Past issues of OBI News can be found in the News Archives.
Campus Outreach
Financial Management Services (FMS) has conducted individual outreach sessions with more than two dozen business units across campus. These meetings have provided unit finance leaders with information about the capabilities of the new tool, staff usage analyses of OBI and the in-scope RM3 reports, the implementation timeline, and how unit change agents and change sponsors can drive a successful transition. ...read more |
Plenty of Training Ahead
Users who are new to OBI will be required to take the online course Introduction to OBI Financial Reporting in STARS. This course recently was updated, so it's valuable not only for new users, but also for anyone who wants to learn more or just get reacquainted with the tool's many useful features. This course is available now. ...read more |
Support You Can Count On
With the implementation of CER, users will find numerous resources to ensure their successful transition to the new tool—just as in the previous phases. There will be campus QA sessions soon after the March release, and a weekly lab where knowledgeable staff help you to optimize your experience with OBI reporting. ...read more |
