How is your department doing in these areas?

• Is your department in touch with the value of information?
• Is your department using technology to maximize the information it receives?

See what your CU colleagues are doing ... and see if their solutions work for you.

Find out how your colleagues take a fresh look at the information status quo.

• Last year, a team in Treasury composed of Charles Cook, Dan Wilson, and Michelle Travis launched an initiative to fund most CU construction projects with Commercial Paper ("CP") – short-term obligations of between 1-270 days that are issued very close to when CU needs construction funds rather than borrowing all funds needed for a project at the beginning of the construction period. Average CP cost of borrowing has been 1.64% as opposed to 3.5% for longer-term borrowing. Furthermore, only the actual amount needed is borrowed. The result is vastly more efficient finance capital construction. See Commercial Paper to Fund Construction Projects. 
• On average, CU processes over 10,000 reimbursements to non-employees every year. Until recently, this was an entirely paper-based process. Last year, a team of CU System staff (Adam Rodriguez, Jaime Mendez, Calvin Anderson, and Linda Warren) took advantage of existing functionality in the Concur Travel & Expense System (Concur) and the PeopleSoft Finance System (FIN) to reimagine an electronic reimbursement process. The new approach reduces the time needed to reimburse non-employees and provides departments with real-time status tracking throughout the process. See CU Non-employee Reimbursements.
• At CU Boulder, Quality Systems Manager Michael Firnhaber and the Housing Facilities Services team wanted to foster a culture of continuous process improvement that valued a range of individuals and inputs. So they designed the Four Voices tool, with each Voice representing a different space in their environment: the Voice of the Customer, the Voice of the Workforce, the Voice of the Operation, and the Voice of the Facility. By purposefully seeking feedback from each of the Four Voices before making changes to operations, they can ensure that their decisions create value for customers, engage the workforce, promote operational efficiency, and ensure sustainable resource management. See Four Voices Framework for Operational Excellence.
• The UCCS Human Resources office recognized a need to enhance the accuracy and flow of transactions in the University’s Human Capital Management (HCM) enterprise system. After visiting CU Boulder to observe that campus’s best practices, the team of Shelly Raney, Susan Watson, and Rebecca Stephens launched a new transaction service group of five students to execute inner office transactions. The office can now address several goals, including cleaning up HCM data, ensuring transaction accuracy moving forward, and providing student workers with professional skills and knowledge that will serve them beyond graduation. See HR Service Center.
• CU System staff faced challenges common to many meeting organizers: how to create meaningful events, involving the appropriate individuals, that are accurately documented (what happened during the meeting/what must happen after it). Last year, Normandy Roden, Chris Seek, and Kris Truesdale addressed these challenges by creating an online form and streamlined business process for an important series of monthly meetings. Now, participants submit discussion items through the agenda webform, which prompts for contextual information and emails summaries to meeting organizers. Additional webform fields are completed during the actual meeting by discussion leaders, generating the meeting's minutes and action items. See Online Meeting Agenda & Minutes Builder.

See how other departments support internal and external customers.

Check out all the CU I&E Awards Program submissions this year on the Office of University Controller website.

Join us at the CU I&E Expo on May 7

Come to the CU I&E Exposition & Awards Ceremony on Tuesday, May 7, 2019 (11:30 a.m.-1:00 p.m.), at the CU System offices (1800 Grant St., Denver). Enjoy refreshments while watching this year's semifinalists (to be determined) demo their submissions.

We look forward to seeing you! Questions? Contact CU I&E Program Manager Frances Chapman.