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Finance Office

SAP & Finance Systems

The University uses SAP for its financial reporting, purchasing, sales, estates management, fixed assets and post-award research grant management. The SAP & Finance Systems team is responsible for maintaining, developing and supporting SAP and other specialist financial systems used across the University.

Specifically SAP team responsibilities include:

  • the on-going maintenance (C.3,000 helpdesk calls and C.200 change requests per year) and development of SAP, its interfaces and outputs and other IT applications used by Finance Office.
  • providing expertise and guidance to departments on how to best use SAP and the other Finance Systems
  • providing training on SAP and other Finance Systems
  • an active role in a number of external SAP user groups and develops and shares best practice across the University.
The team has almost 800 immediate customers and maintains its own website but a brief summary of its activities are included below:
  •  Access/Security
    • Provide access for new Users
    • Maintain profiles and roles so that Users have the right transactions to do their jobs
    • Continual review of usage
    • Prevent unauthorised access to systems/transactions
    • Allow levels of authorisation for some transactions
  • Training
    • Provide training tailored to departmental requirements
    • One-to-one training
    • Maintain and develop SAP OnLine Training (SOLT)
  • Help Desk
    • Central point for all SAP queries
    • Available every working day
    • Hands-on help for smaller departments
    • Experienced Help Desk staff backed up by rest of the Team
  • Maintenance/Support
    • Behind the scenes software/hardware constantly monitored
    • Software/Hardware upgrades (most of which are never seen by Users)
    • Provide a robust system
    • Interfaces to other systems such as HR, Student Records
  • Development
    • SAP constantly updated, most days and certainly every week changes are made to the production system
    • Improvements to refine functionality are on going
    • Business Analysts work on providing the functionality needed within an ever changing University
    • Large projects such as the introduction of Purchasing Cards

SAP & Financial Systems Staff