Movie tickets are available now - reserve yours at the OCSS front desk before they run out!!

In late January 2016, Lisa Drouillard, Director of Payroll, and Lance Rand, Manager and Software Developer for DoIT’s Business Service Group, began meeting to streamline and digitize the contract renewal process. The renewal process is an important aspect for graduate assistants, part-time faculty, and contingent employees which previously involved multiple steps and forms to be completed by hand. Drouillard and Rand worked in unison to create and roll out eContract, a digital version of the renewal process, without a hitch. 

Before eContract, service center employees would have to print, complete, and verify various forms by hand, then deliver them to the payroll office manually. After that, the payroll office would print the documentation, review it for incorrect information, and finally pass this along to be logged in the database.

The new system allows for many of these steps to be eliminated, freeing up much needed time and energy for both employees of payroll and campus service centers. Now, the entire process can be conducted digitally by receiving digital authorization from an approver or approvers, and then entering the information directly into the system. 

Once employee information is entered into eContract, the system then checks the information for errors, eliminating any review work which was conducted prior by payroll. The new system has also improved turnaround time to about one day giving employees a longer window of time to complete their forms.

 

Drouillard and Rand not only helped streamline the contract renewal process, but also their meetings as well. Instead of having shorter meetings every week, their meetings consisted of three to four hour sessions. 

As a result, Drouillard and Rand were able to quickly define the scope and requirements of the project, allowing them to have large blocks of time to sit and discuss their plans in depth. 

“We were developing a new solution and as such, it could have 'wandered'. By choosing the short, deep-dive, we constrained ourselves.” said Rand. 

The result of the project spoke for itself, as it quickly reached completion in May of that same year. Drouillard provided her functional skill-set in order to outline all of the business processes and requirements for the system, and Rand then used his technical expertise to translate the requirements into specifications that an outside developer could use to begin crafting the system. “[I was the bridge] between Lisa’s functional expertise and the developers technical skill and experience,” Rand said.

“He’s technical; I’m functional; and we brought these two worlds together,” said Drouillard. This key partnership between the two helped keep the project together.    

   

The new eContract system has key benefits to campus transactions from both the perspectives of the payroll office and the service centers. “The biggest savings that we have seen in the back office is that these transactions are usually being processed in high volume cycles, so this has eliminated some of that,” said Drouillard. 

Before implementing the new system, the payroll office received an overload of volume right after the end of winter break, however the new system now alleviates that by providing a larger window which service center employees can use to submit these forms. Another benefit of digitizing the process is that the status of contracts in the queue is now visible for anyone in the process to view. 

Feedback has been extremely positive and there have been very few issues thus far. With eContract being rolled out, Drouillard and Rand have improved efficiencies for numerous staff members, both in Payroll and in Shared Service Centers.  “They asked for this and we did it. I think it made a big impact with them and we wanted to let them know that their voices were heard,” said Drouillard.    

The following are pictured: Dunia Thornton, Michelle Bobovych, Shirley Chao, Jane Henderson, Samantha Sutton, Pam Raley, Lisa Drouillard, Lance Rand, Dee Young, Kathy Suess, Jacinta Kelly and David Allison. 

Interested in another success story? Read about Goabroad and how it makes it easy to study abroad. You can find a complete list of Business Services success stories on the DoIT website.

Follow the DoIT Group on myUMBC for more updates

We are kicking off Commuter Week with a bus trip with (seb) to Washington D.C. on Saturday, March 11th. Tickets are going fast - be sure to get yours today at the CIC!

Stanley B. Burns, M.D., historian, collector, and physician, recently donated a part of his daguerreotype collection to the Photography Collections of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC).  The gift of 252 daguerreotypes continues Dr. Burns’ long relationship with UMBC.

As an historian, Dr. Burns has written over 1,100 articles and over forty books on subjects ranging from Victorian funeral portraits to early oncology.  His books Sleeping Beauty: Memorial Photography In America, and Forgotten Marriage:  The Painted Tintype & The Decorative Frame, 1860-1910, A Lost Chapter in American Portraiture both received American Photographic Historical Society awards for best publications.

Among the donated works are both signed and unsigned daguerreotypes, that is, ones for which the photographer is identified and ones for which the photographer is anonymous.  The anonymous ones are valued for the uniqueness of the imagery, the interesting representations of nineteenth century people, and the material culture characteristics.  The identified ones are valued for these same qualities as well as having information about the photographers.  More than seventy different photographers are represented among the signed works, including daguerreotypists such as Charles Deforest Fredericks, Rufus Anson, John Plumbe, Jr., Samuel Broadbent, and Jessie Whitehurst.

The gift substantially increases the holdings of daguerreotypes at UMBC.

Visit Special Collections to see our growing collection of daguerreotypes.

Information table located on Main Street

Appointments held in the Mosaic Center on the 2nd floor

The first session begins at 4:00 PM on Monday, February 27th in The Commons 318. Sign-up at http://bit.do/MindfulMondays

We are working to investigate exactly why this failure resulted in the type of outage it did and how we can prevent this type of outage in the future.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to email me for additional information. 

Damian Doyle

Senior Director of Enterprise Infrastructure

DoIT - UMBC

Do you want to stay active while meeting other commuter students?!  If so, Commuter Intramurals are perfect for you!  The Commuter Crushers are back for the Spring semester, and registration is happening now!

This semester we have three Commuter Crusher teams: Floor Hockey, Outdoor Soccer, and Outdoor Flag Football.  If you would like to sign-up, go to imleagues.com and create an account.  Once you have an account, click the sport that you are interested in and click the "Join Team" button next to the Commuter Crushers.  The time commitment is small, and each team can choose when they are available to play.

Questions?  Contact Katie Weir, Coordinator for Commuter Engagement, at kweir@umbc.edu.