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!
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
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
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
Reduce Effort on Testing Coversheets
Kathryn Cole realized her and her team were spending a lot of time scanning and renaming the coversheets for student testing done in her office. The paper versions of the electronic copies were being filed as well. Kathryn has adjusted their process to no longer scan the coversheets for tests returned to faculty online since the email serves as their documentation of being returned. This alone will save her team time and while working with the system she discovered when updating a group of test status the system automatically inserts a note and timestamp.
Fellow Change Agents:
Craig Alexander, Christopher Blackman
Impact of idea:
$1,200 annually in efficiency savings
Automate the P-Card Escalation Process
Caitlin Day Wedel's SSC teams were manually following up on all past due P-Card transactions. This escalation plan required SSC accountants to manually create emails specific to every card holder. Caitlin worked with our P-Card administrators and FMS team to create a process in Concur to automate notices on P-card transactions that were not assigned to an expense report. This use of system notifications will free up our staff's time to focus on other value-added work.
Fellow Change Agents:
Karen Schaller, Mike Lewis, Katrina Yoakum, Gina Cregg, Stephanie Howser, Jodie Seaton, Amy Carlson, and Lori Gutsch
Impact of idea:
$8,000 annually in efficiency savings
