A statue of a bronze Jayhawk in front of a building on KU's campus.

Your Ideas Matter

Jayhawks Elevate is successful because of you. Your ideas make us better. Below are some examples of processes being improved by your peer's ideas. Check out changes being made. Perhaps you have an idea to submit too!

SSC Notification for New P-Cards

Dona Jurgensen had noticed she wouldn't be aware of her departments having new P-Cards until after transactions started to post on their profiles.  This caused difficulty because the SSC is responsible for getting them reconciled for KU/KUCR to pay our Corporate bank card partner.  We now have a weekly and monthly report that contains all issued/approved P-Cards for that time frame to share with SSC/LSI/IPSR/AMS.  This will keep everyone informed on new P-cards to watch for.

Fellow Change Agents:

Mike Lewis, Mischa Bell, Kevin Teel, Karen Schaller, Todd Dilley, Jena Gunter, Jennifer Hollwick

Impact of idea:

The reconcilers for P-Cards will be informed of new potential activity to watch for.

Entry to Kansas Memorial Union with Jayhawk statue in front

Capital Asset Classification Improvements

Annie Rajaei noticed that transactions post for Captial Assets and communications between Audit reviews and the invoice creator were not being captured. In order to prevent incorrect classifications, Audit and accounting will continue to work with SSC/Depts to educate all parties about what is required to have a purchase capitalized. Other relevant information on the transaction will be captured in the TDX ticket submission as well.

Fellow Change Agents:

Brenda Barski, Colette Gillespie, Melissa Stewart, Wendy Reese, Jama Salber, Jessica Chilcoat, John Mathews, and Ben Lizak

Impact of idea:

Small financial savings but more informed campus partners for fewer errors

Picture of Joseph R Pearson Hall from base of the building looking straight to the roof

Intelligent Document Recognition (IDR)

Judy Hamner was aware of an Oracle technology called Intelligent Document Recognition (IDR). IDR has the capability to read PDF invoices and automatically enter them into the system when a Purchase Order is associated with it. She worked diligently with her team to implement IDR in Dec '2023. After 6 months of using IDR, it is estimated that 2500 invoices will not have to be manually entered each year. This is a huge savings for our AP team.

Fellow Change Agents:

Melissa Stewart, Ben Lizak, Nolan Haire, Erin Sommer, Jessica Johnson Webb, Jennifer Hollwick

Impact of idea:

$11,500 annual efficiency savings

picture of a digital cloud processing

New Travel Card option

Karen Schaller recognized that we kept having repeat applications for travelers who would get a declining balance card for every trip since they did not need a typical P-Card.  Rather than having the traveler continue to get a new card each time, the team worked with Commerce to create a P-Card profile specific to travel expenses.  This limits the merchants the card can be used with and allows a traveler to use the same card for their travel expenses rather than getting a new card each trip.

Fellow Change Agents:

Mike Lewis, Mischa Bell, Kevin Teel

Impact of idea:

At least $1,000 annually in efficiency savings

Jayhawk placeholder image

P-Card Application Improvements

The existing PDF form process for applying and getting a P-Card for KU or KUCR required employees to fill in the document, sign it and then collect supervisor signatures before scanning and emailing to P-Card administrators for approval.  These emails would make it difficult to prioritize more urgent types of cards. The process now is in our Finance Services portal which automates the workflow approvals for supervisor signatures and allows our administrators to filter on specific card type requests to prioritize when appropriate.

Fellow Change Agents:

Mike Lewis, Karen Schaller, Mischa Bell, Craig Alexander, and Todd Dilley

Impact of idea:

At least $6,500 annually in efficiency savings

KU building with red and yellow flowers in front.

See What Other Improvements are Being Made