Enterprise Systems Project

Enterprise Systems Project
Communications Assessment Survey
Executive Summary
November 15, 1999

Overview
The Communications Assessment Survey was sent to the Student 2000 Project, Human Resources Management System (HRMS), and Office of Human Resource (OHR) listservs. The Student 2000 Project listserv has 760 subscribers; the HRMS and OHR listservs have about 800 subscribers. Subscribers to the listservs include users, project team members, and interested/involved staff members.

Number of respondents
99 subscribers to the Student listserv responded, or 13%. Of these, 78% worked in colleges or departments; 22% in administrative units.
101 subscribers to the HRMS and OHR listservs responded, or 13%. Respondents were nearly evenly divided between colleges or departments and administrative units.

Generally respondents felt communications were helpful, effective, and they would like to know even more.

Most respondents strongly agreed or agreed that they understood the vision and goals of the ESP project and could generally discuss the project with colleagues.
Most found information distributed through the listservs as helpful to their jobs, felt information received from the project was credible and wanted more information than they were getting, especially about "nuts and bolts" of PeopleSoft panels and processes.
Staff feel they are adequately informed about how users access the system, timeline for implementations — two topics which have been heavily communicated in both project and training materials. On the other hand, staff do not feel adequately informed about how their departments can use the system to improve service or how the system will change their jobs -- issues that we will emphasize in the future change management part of the communication strategy.
Survey respondents who are PeopleSoft users say they are getting the information they need to do their jobs, but would like more information and training assistance.

System performance a BIG problem

In answer to the statement "The new system will help my department improve service to students, faculty, and staff" most respondents had no opinion or disagreed. The response to "The new system will make my job easier" generated the most "disagrees" and strongly disagrees" in the survey.
The Comments section of the communications survey, and, more particularly, the training survey are litanies of frustration about the system. It's too slow, complicated, it crashes or freezes.

What's next. . .
The ESP Communications Team needs to reconcile the recommendations we received from our interviews with Sponsors and Project Directors and the findings of this survey and come up with a comprehensive communications plan. The users and staff want more information, and the more detailed the better. The Sponsors and Project Managers see faculty and academic administrators as focus for communications as we begin the change effort. We have to figure out a plan to do both.