As the EISE/Banner project moves along on schedule, employees working in areas of finance are approaching some important training sessions and milestones.

EISE/Banner will eventually affect the entire university community, as broken down into five areas:

•  Finance - accounting, purchasing and budgeting

•  Human resources - benefits, payroll and employment

•  Student - admissions, registration, scheduling, grades, transcripts, degree audits and faculty workload

•  Financial aid

•  Advancement - (fund-raising) and Alumni

Each area is on a different timeline, with all working toward project completion by early 2008.

Currently, four process teams are consulting and training on Banner and DARwin: the Finance Process Team, which started in April 2005; the Human Resources Process Team, which started in July 2005; the Student Process Team, which started in November 2005; and the Degree Audit Process Team, which started this month. They'll be joined by the Financial Aid Process Team in March and by the Advancement Process Team in July.

The Finance Process Team has moved on to the testing phase. The new software will affect budget and vendor account numbers for fiscal year 2007, which begins this July 1.

Starting in April, all fiscal agents and designees will be trained on how to create new requisitions. In May and June, other accounting changes will be covered, including how to manage accounts with new reports.

Project team members are being trained by SCT to learn the system and configure the software to meet EIU's needs. Process Team members then confer with departments throughout the University as they mold these new systems.

“We have a lot of control over how these systems work for us,” said Bill Witsman , project director.

A team is cleaning up current data and moving what's needed from the current system, such as vendor names, to the Banner system.

Once the system is ready, EIU employees will begin training others on campus who will need to be familiarized with the changes.

EISE – which stands for Executive Information Systems Enhancement – actually encompasses three software suites: Banner, the main software suite involved; Kronos, a time-entry system for payroll; and DARwin , a degree-audit system.

The purpose of the project is to change the university's entire campus over to one integrated infrastructure system to make the system easier to use; cheaper to maintain; and more efficient in data collection, organization and reporting.

The project, which started taking shape in January 2005, is on schedule and on budget. All aspects of the system are expected to be online by early 2008.

Upcoming milestones for EISE/Banner

By EIU Department of University Communications