Sarah Lentz says the Banner system at UNM is twice as much work as the old paper-based system - for now anyway.
"We knew there were going to be problems," said Lentz, administrator for the Department of Theatre and Dance. "They warned us that any big move like this, there's going to be a huge transition period, so it was to be expected."
Banner, a database for handling financial transactions, was implemented across the University at the beginning of July.
Lentz said when all the wrinkles get hammered out, the system should actually be pretty good. Until then, she said she has to follow every document through all the stops to make sure people get paid. She said she never had to track documents so closely before.
"They told us we wouldn't have to print things out," she said. "Because some things get lost, we definitely still have to print everything out."
Fred Youberg is the coordinator for Project LINK, the team behind Banner. He said the University's progress is pretty much where the team expected it to be at this point.
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"The biggest frustration is the difficulty we've been having getting reports to people and getting data out of the system," he said. "Server response time has been an issue. They can get their reports, but they're taking a little bit longer to actually come back."
Still, Youberg said, he can tell things are getting better, because there's been a decrease in the number of phone calls to the service center, and the Banner training courses aren't filling up as quickly as they used to. He said people have been learning how to use the online knowledge base, so they're answering their own questions.
"People are entering orders," he said. "Vendors are being paid, and people are being reimbursed for travel. All of the critical finance transactions are taking place. I think there are still pockets out there of people who are still struggling with some of the details."
Darlene Trujillo, supervisor administrative support in the Anderson Schools of Management, said she was able to navigate the change in process primarily using word-of-mouth.
"At the beginning, we were relying on the printed material they had given us," she said. "Some of it wasn't current, or it was a whole lot more complicated than they needed to make it."
Trujillo said typewriters are obsolete, and though it took a few months, she's enjoying the Banner system.
Trujillo has been working for UNM for more than 26 years.
"I've been at the University for a long time, so I thought this would never come to fruition," she said. "It's nice to see that it has. It hasn't made me want to retire yet, so I guess that's good."
Youberg said other schools using Banner told him not to evaluate the success of the system until at least six months after its implementation.
"A lot of what you pick up at first is just noise," he said. "People aren't at a point yet where they can appreciate all the good things that are there."
Project LINK hired an independent evaluator who will be assessing the success of the system in January.
