In July of 2014, after years of planning, development, and testing, UCI moved to the Kuali Financial System (KFS). KFS allows us to better manage UCI’s substantial finances.
Elements that have been implemented include:
- General Ledger
- Chart of Accounts
- Financial Processing
- Purchasing / Accounts Payable
- Contracts and Grants
- Capital Asset Management
- Travel and Event Management
- Electronic document workflow
- Decision Support data warehouse and reporting
- Kuali Security Access Management System
- Sciquest online procurement catalog and ordering system
The launch of KFS allowed us to retire several business systems (FS, PAL, EQS, PBS, PayQuest, etc.) that were 20-30 years old. While they have served us long and well, they were no longer capable of meeting campus needs nor could they be maintained. With the exception of PPS, we are now independent of the IBM mainframe at UCOP.
KFS comprises 1.4 million lines of programming, of which 220,000 lines were written to adapt it to UCI’s needs. The system required developing interfaces to 40 other campus systems.
This was a major team effort, involving subject matter experts from the Accounting Office, Budget Office, Procurement Office, and UCIMC, modification developers, configuration managers, interface developers, business analysts, database administrators, testers, data converters, unit adoption leads, access control leads, security specialists, data modelers, report writers, system administrators, trainers, training material developers, vendors, banks and agencies.
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems are notoriously difficult to implement, and KFS represents a great success and a hallmark collaboration for UCI.