The Financial Systems Modernization project is an initiative to replace the legacy technologies behind FAMIS, and to modernize the financial systems and processes used by members of the A&M System.
Objectives
- Discover options available to the A&M System to modernize our existing financial tools with a user-friendly, integrated system
- Improve and simplify processes following industry-accepted best practices
- Reduce risk and realize efficiencies
Background
Our home-grown financial system has served the A&M System for many years. The previous system ran on a legacy computing platform that was reliable and stable but had limitations:
- It was expensive to acquire, maintain, and support mainframe hardware and software,
- It was difficult to adapt to changing business needs,
- It was dependent on many manual, paper-based processes,
- Existing business processes were, at times, no longer considered best practices,
- It was highly dependent on employees with unique specialized knowledge, many of whom are nearing retirement age, and
- It was difficult for new users.
Our desire was to move to a modern, user-friendly, integrated system.
In 2016, a Finance Discovery Working Group was formed to work with a project team to initiate and develop the discovery process and provide member insight into the needs of a potential replacement financial system.