The University is somewhat behind in paying its bills after implementing a new financial system in July, according to University officials.

Bills are being paid more slowly as University staff members adjust to the new SCT Banner financial system that went online in July, said Michael Provenzano, senior associate vice president for business and financial services.

"In general, we are paying our bills," Provenzano said. "We are somewhat behind, but not so behind where it will be alarming,"

Since the start of Banner, 127,000 invoices have been processed: 34,000 of the 48,000 purchase orders and 78,000 of the 80,000 direct payments have been paid, according to Michael Bass, assistant vice president for business and financial services.

"People are frustrated because it's a new system," Bass said. "This is more of a learning curve than it is a system issue."

Banner will eventually host all University functions through the Internet. It is an integrated system uniting the three University of Illinois campuses costing $7.9 million and is part of the $197 million UI Integrate project.

As of March 2002, the University of Illinois campuses used 120 separate student-related services and only six were used by more than one campus. Banner allows these separate systems to be combined into a single database system — the enterprise resource planning system.

"Are we at the productivity level we want to be at?" Bass asked. "No, but we are working to get there."

Bass said the transition to the new system will take time.

"Change is not easy," Bass said. "It takes time for people who have been doing a job in a certain way to start over."

In March 2002, Tom Glenn, the former leader of UI Integrate Student Systems Functional Team, said the University would face major challenges implementing Banner.

"The challenge will be absorbing change within the institution on a greatly accelerated time schedule than has been experienced during previous decades," Glenn said. "It will be a new experience for many departments working through the interdependencies they have on one another using an integrated system."

Nicole Udzenija, communications project manager for UI Integrate, said whenever a project is this large and includes this much change it will take employees time to adjust to the new system.

"From what we heard from other institutions, we have had one of the smoothest transitions to the new Banner financial system," Udzenija said. "The biggest change is that the transactions people are executing are available in real time."

Udzenija said the new system is processing bills at the same rate as the old system.

"In order to convert from the old to new system we had to stop processing bills for a month and that is responsible for the backlog," Udzenija said. "There were a number of weeks to catch up once we brought the new system up."

Employees went through substantial training before and after the system went online. Udzenija said the biggest problem is that some University employees are facing challenges accessing their financial reports. She said they are working to correct the problem.