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Another areas Universities might be different is in accounting/payroll. We have people with multiple appointments reporting to multiple departments getting paid out of multiple accounts/grants etc. And these factors could change monthly. Interesting set of challenges while trying to build a robust back-end. -----Original Message----- From: David McFarlane [mailto:[log in to unmask]] Sent: Thursday, July 07, 2011 5:36 PM To: [log in to unmask] Subject: Re: [MSUNAG] EBS HR Module, SAP GUI and Adobe Acrobat Kevin, At 7/7/2011 05:01 PM Thursday, Kevin M. Carr wrote: >On Jul 7, 2011, at 4:33 PM, David McFarlane wrote: > > > Well, I just had a phone call with someone in MSU Payroll, and > that person explained a few things that could make a difference in > this discussion: > > > > - SAP was designed for *businesses*, *not* universities. > > - No one else makes a system designed for the practices at > universities, so SAP was actually the best of all the admitedly > insufficienct alternatives at the time. > >This explanation gets the raised eyebrow from me. The system is being >used for the *business* operations of the University; payroll, human >resources, budgeting, ordering, invoicing, etc. Are these operations at >a university SO different from businesses in the private sector? SAP is >deployed across a wide range of business sectors that I find it hard to >believe that MSU presented a set of challenges unlike any encountered >in previous SAP deployments. I take your point, and I don't mean to become an apologist for SAP, I am just trying to accurately understand the nature of the mess we are in. But do businesses regularly allow all of their employees at all levels direct access to the personnel system in order to enter time off, check vacation accruals, get earnings statements, etc., etc.? Or do businesses generally leave all that to HR personnel, so that ordinary employees can do those things only by going through a small set of people authorized and trained for that purpose? Maybe that is one of the things that makes the business operations of a university different from the business operations of a business. -- dkm