Frequently Asked Questions

As SBU continues to grow and change, current finance, budget, human capital, and business operations needs are also evolving across Divisions, Departments, Schools and Offices. The University is moving forward, and perhaps now more than ever, it has become of critical importance that the systems we use to support our efforts help fuel this momentum, drive enhancements/improvements, and enable our faculty and staff to continue to reach past the norm, past the status quo. Starting now will give our teams ample time to build, test, implement and operate in a new ERP before PeopleSoft sunsets in 2034.  

Several ERP systems were evaluated, and Oracle was selected as the vendor that could best meet SB’s needs. Four modules will be implemented:

• Enterprise Data Management (EDM)
• Enterprise Performance Management (EPM)
• Human Capital Management (HCM)
• Finance

1. Access to quality, real-time data: The Oracle system will migrate enterprise data from numerous legacy systems at SB into a single, cloud-based software application and centralized database. Sharing information and data across the institution will move from our current state of discordant hardware and disjointed systems, into an environment where sharing data will be streamlined, consistent, less risky and less reliant on manual integrations and labor-intensive processes. This will enable SB teams to aggregate and analyze information in transparent, holistic and powerful ways, leading to knowledgeable, data-driven decision making.
2. Modern and robust real-time reporting: Existing reporting tools are lacking modern capabilities and are not aligned to support real-time business planning and financial management efforts, creating a complex data reporting environment. Modern, robust reporting capabilities, inherent in Oracle’s ERP will provide standard, automated financial and HR reporting, analytics and oversight tools, along with improved and integrated controls. Individual areas will have the data needed to be empowered to make timely and accurate decisions that positively impact efficiencies and productivity while also supporting financial stewardship, accountability and institutional priorities.
3. Simplified and standardized business processes: Utilizing Oracle will allow for SB’s financial and human capital data to be housed in one, consolidated system. Our teams will spend less time on data gathering, manual integrations and labor-intensive reconciliations which have resulted in inconsistent and overcomplicated business processes. The process of transitioning to a new ERP will also aid in the identification of inefficient, non-standardized processes and organically drive the alignment, or redesign, of SB’s financial and business practices to become more modern and standardized.
4. Better employee experiences: The new ERP will modernize and transform the way HR operates by providing employees with self-service options for many HR functions and transactions that currently take time (and resources) within our HR division. A modern, web-based user interface can be accessed from anywhere, and will allow SBU to shift our HR teammates' focus away from current, labor-intensive processes and into strategic support, recruitment, employee experience and retention of faculty and staff.
5. Empowering faculty: Streamlining HR processes, and automating many of the steps involved in hiring a new member of our faculty or staff, will reduce the amount of time and effort faculty members will need to expend in order to make critical hires for their area, allowing SB to continue to fill our faculty positions with the best candidates in the world.  
6. Preparing for the future: Each of the above will allow for SB’s internal teams to shift their focus from burdensome, time-consuming processes over to strategic planning and support efforts for long-term initiatives and goals for the institution. Oracle’s ERP system will rid SB of existing, highly-customized systems and provide a modern, sustainable platform that supports long-term viability and SB’s continued growth and mission to advance academic, research and healthcare in our global community. 

We anticipate that this large initiative will pay for itself over time through improved resource allocation that helps to identify how the institution can increase revenue and prioritize expenditures. In addition, many intangible benefits will result from this implementation. Implementations of this nature within a higher education setting often do not directly result in labor savings across the University enterprise, nor do we predict a cost savings to the University in this way, however, it is anticipated that SB will have the ability to redeploy existing labor in order to better support the academic enterprise. Burdensome, time-consuming processes will be reworked to become streamlined and efficient. Staff will be relieved of tedious, labor-intensive procedures allowing their focus to transition into strategy and planning rather than process support. Managers and leaders will benefit from access to aligned enterprise data for enriched human capital management and financial planning needs.

It is also worth noting that the Finance & Administration leadership team is exploring additional funding sources, including the SUNY Capital Fund earmarked for IT investments.  

We will be working hand-in-hand with Oracle during this multi-year implementation as well as our implementation partner, Deloitte. 

We are preparing and planning for a multi-year implementation. As specific timelines of the various phases are created, we’ll be sharing them via the Office of Change Management newsletter.

Oracle's ERP has been successfully implemented at numerous institutions that are similar to Stony Brook (Stanford, UCLA, Johns Hopkins, Boston University, Rutgers, and the University of Pittsburgh). In fact, during the initial stages of this project, our senior leaders met with many of these institutions to ask about strategies, successes, areas for improvement, and other valuable insights that we will be working hard to include during Stony Brook's implementaiton. By and large, the biggest insight we learned was the importance of communication and change management to all stakeholders involved in the project. In response, we have instituted the Office of Change Management at Stony Brook, and developed a thorough and far-reaching communications plan, that will work to ensure all stakeholders have the information they need throughout the duration of this multi-year implementation. 

Yes and no. Stony Brook University Hospital (SBUH) will be using the Human Capital Management (HCM) module of Oracle for State employees. However, SBUH will be staying with the Lawson system for financial accounting.

The Stony Brook Foundation (SBF) will be on our instance of Oracle (WolfieONE), similar to what we do today for PeopleSoft. Today, SBF utilizes the on-premise PeopleSoft system so they'll be changing to the new system in Oracle.

Not at this time, however we may re-assess this in the future. 

Yes. While academic student records will remain in PeopleSoft Campus Solutions, when a student becomes an employee of Stony Brook University, a record will be created and maintained in WolfieONE, as the student will be a part of the employee population which is being managed. In this case, two records will exist: the existing Student Record in Campus Solutions and a new record in WolfieONE. Two separate records will be maintained and managed in each system. 

SB Reporting will still be available, but it will not be needed for a number of reports. Training will be provided around which reports are available from Oracle and which should be pulled from Oracle.

Today, the budgets to actuals information is completed manually between the accounting team and the budget office, and it takes us about 4 months to complete. The information that's available now (on the BFP&A website) starts at the highest level (enterprise) and then peels back the bits and pieces (to explain the Academic and Research enterprise). We are going to pivot with the new system, as one of the goals is to have auditable financial statements. We'll start from the auditable financial statements and then peel back the management pieces that get to Academic and Research. The information will still be available, but we are going to be changing how we get to that information and it will be presented a little differently.

This is still to be determined, as the answer is largely dependent on where the WolfieONE data is originating from. Data in WolfieONE will be up-to-date, but some boundary systems that WolfieONE pulls data from may have a different cadence for transferring data into WolfieONE (i.e. a nightly data patch), where data may not be real-time. Rest assured that we will note any nuances like these on instructions related to reports in WolfieONE.

Not at this time, however we may re-assess this in the future.

Yes, the new time approval system allows for a delegate approval. 

Yes. We are gradually building the understanding now, and will also have formal training prior to go live. The WolfieONE Change Champions are helping us cascade this foundational information to their areas. 

No, they will continue to manage Course Scheduling as they are in the current state. 

We are not retiring all of SOLAR. The student-related or student-facing fields will still be functional. SB Alerts sign up will remain in SOLAR, as it is for the whole campus community, not just employees. 

Key benefits for the hospital include a more intuitive interface and greater transparency of all processes and request statuses, because all the data is consolidated in one platform, cloud-based, and electronic, as opposed to relying on other systems, paper, or email attachments.

The Chart of Accounts (CoA), is the basic structure used to record the financial effects of transactions in Oracle Cloud (Financial Transformation).

No. Stony Brook Medicine will remain in Lawson for the Hospital's accounting ERP system, so the CoA will remain the same as in the current state for operational purposes.

PeopleSoft Finance is being retired, and PeopleSoft HR will be replaced by Oracle. However, Campus Solutions will remain in place. 

The CoA structure will be developed through a review of the current requirements and structure, a review of leading practices in the industry and with Oracle, and a strong collaboration with various stakeholder groups who will have insight and be impacted by changes.

• Create a systematic integration of all financial data
• Provide a framework for monthly financial reports
• Provide full GAAP financial statements
• Encompass and involve all related entities and stakeholders
• Provide a shared chart of accounts structure so campus users can continue to see All-Fund reporting
• Translate the “new” chart of accounts into the SUNY specific reporting format
• Provide upload capabilities to SUNY

The new CoA structure was developed through a review of the current requirements and structure, a review of leading practices in the industry and with Oracle, and a strong collaboration with various stakeholder groups who provided insights and expertise. 

The new Chart structure is comprised of 7 segments and 15 attributes (with two future segments that will not be used as of go live), compared to 8 segments and 59 attributes in PeopleSoft in the current state.

The new structure is more flexible, utilizes each segment for a unique and well defined purpose, and gives us the ability to leverage hierarchies to the fullest extent.

The new CoA segments can be combined to create queries, and facilitate the external financial reporting that is one of our goals for this project, in terms of auditable financial statements, and accrued financial statements.

Anyone who enters or manages transactions across a number of systems that will integrate with WolfieONE (Oracle Fusion Cloud) will be impacted to some degree, as well as anyone who uses reporting tools (financial, budgeting, or HR reports).

Yes. We will be building certain controls/rules in the system to avoid duplicate entries as those could result in errors.

We plan to clean up our existing chart prior to going live. In the new chart, we will look to name accounts to be more aligned with our schools. 

The new chart will cleanup any PeopleSoft description issues, by aligning them with current naming. If the SUNY Account descriptions remain an issue, we plan to discuss this with SUNY to determine if they will allow for description changes. 

Any and all change requests must be initiated in Enterprise Data Management (EDM) and go through the EDM approval workflows. The changes will be made by EDM administrators, with a greater oversight (by the Controller’s office) than in the current state to ensure chart governance principles are being observed.

The inherent Oracle platform (cloud system) that Stony Brook is implementing is tracking those effective dates around the CoA comparable to the effective dates in our current chart of accounts already.

If we are interested in the effective dates of when values can start being used, Oracle takes care of that inherently within the system. For transactions posted, the budget year segment will come into play if carryover funds are utilized, as part of the process in determining when those funds are used. 

This will be a fund (this pertains to PATEO codes for grant-funded activity and we will crosswalk those to the new fund).

Generally speaking, the combination of fund and org segments on the new CoA would create that syncing with the State from the CoA standpoint. When the transaction is funded by a commitment, then the campus commitment segment must also be entered. For payroll in particular (we will call this labor costing), we will be entering the fund and the campus commitment segments (no org needed) into WolfieONE HCM, and that will map to the SUNY account.

It's important to note that today, Stony Brook does not create our own set of financial statements. We rely on consolidated financial statements from SUNY. One of our project goals is to begin using our own system, and make WolfieONE the system of record to the greatest extent possible. 

In the example given, payroll is a challenge, as we do not process our own payroll. However, we are exploring all avenues for our future state, and how we might be able to create our own data sets. Doing so would free us from having to rely on 'after-the-fact' reports, SUNY BI connections, or delays that we currently experience.

WolfieONE will become the system of record for RF and State employee data. Other employee populations may have access to WolfieONE, but will continue to use their boundary systems for some processes, and as such, should leverage certain reports from those systems, or the future state data warehouse (FDI), which is also a part of WolfieONE, rather than from the General Ledger (ERP) or HCM. Training will be provided closer to go-live on the data source for specific types of financial, HR and budget transactions.

The account segment will tell the end user (and the system) whether the transaction is an expense, revenue, liability, etc. It will be the “fund” segment in the new CoA that denotes which funds were are spending from, as well as whether those funds are for restricted or unrestricted use.

For some of the WolfieONE segment values such as Fund, there will be a one-to-one mapping to the old legacy SUNY State Account Number. Users that currently have access to E-RAS can use E-RAS to display both the old legacy SUNY State Account Number along with the corresponding new Fund value. Users that do not have access to E-RAS will be able to log on to a new website that can be used to show the one-to-one mapping between the new Fund value and the old legacy SUNY State account number.

The RF numbers and Report Center are not going away. SBF will be on Oracle. Processes, mapping, and build out may cause some of those account numbers to experience change as we work through the Chart of Accounts, but the RF components will not be changing.

Campus Solutions is being modified to support the new WolfieONE Chart of Accounts values. The modifications will not impact current functionality. A daily automated integration will send the latest Chart of Accounts information from WolfieONE’s Enterprise Data Management application (EDM) to Campus Solutions to keep financial data aligned across systems. All student receivables activity will continue as they are in the current state. 

No. WolfMart will remain in place and serve as a boundary system, seamlessly feeding data into the new ERP system. 

This is not in scope for Stony Brook University for WolfieONE. However, the Stony Brook Foundation will be utilizing WolfieONE to manage and processs payment for suppliers.

No. Concur will remain in place and serve as a boundary system, seamlessly feeding data into the new ERP system.

We will be using the Time & Labor area of WolfieONE Human Capital Management (HCM) for time entry. This will enable automatically calculation of absence accruals. Read the myTIME announcement (opens in a new tab). 

The new HR service delivery model (opens in a new tab), also part of HR Now, will continue to empower employees and leverage Oracle capabilities to provide seamless self-service experiences. 

No. University employees will be using Time & Labor in WolfieONE Human Capital Management (HCM).

No. These employees will continue to use Kronos. 

Going forward, the WolfieONE Human Capital Management (HCM) module will serve as the primary system of record for employee data administration and workforce management across the campus. This will replace our current PeopleSoft HCM environment, while ensuring continuity and enhanced capabilities in managing employee information.

This includes State Student Assistants and Federal Work Study Students, who will transition from their previous custom setup in PeopleSoft to WolfieONE. However, because Stony Brook operates within a federated data environment, the "system of record" is defined by the specific domain and legal entity of the employee:

• Campus Administrative Gateway: WolfieONE HCM is the system of record for local workforce structures, employee self-service, and recruitment/onboarding. It acts as the primary interface for managing campus appointments and personnel transactions.
• Official Payroll Records: While WolfieONE tracks and initiates transactions, the Office of the State Comptroller (OSC) remains the official system of record for State payroll data.
• Research Foundation (RF): The RF EBS system remains the official system of record for RF payroll and will continue to operate as a "boundary system" to WolfieONE.
• Data Federation: Every transaction initiated in the SBU WolfieONE system must be posted to the broader SUNY system. Because WolfieONE may not contain the full historical State employment record for all individuals, State systems must still be referenced for comprehensive official data.
• Integrated Entities: This framework ensures that while WolfieONE streamlines the user experience for SBU employees, the distinct legal and financial records for the Faculty Student Association (FSA) and the Stony Brook Foundation (SBF) are maintained in accordance with their respective governing requirements.

PeopleSoft Finance is being retired, and PeopleSoft HR will be replaced by Oracle. However, Campus Solutions will remain in place.

Yes. WolfieONE will be the system of record with Oracle Recruiting Cloud supporting recruiting and onboarding information that will be collected for employee records for University (State and RF), and SB Hospital/LISVH. However, faculty will continue to be hired through Interfolio and students will continue to be hired using Handshake.

There has been no requirement to change the current process for uploading licenses or requiring employees to upload a renewal. 

New hires will get a system notification with a 'before day one journey' once they have an employee ID/SBU ID so they can login and conduct their onboarding activities.

WolfieONE Learning, part of HCM, will include compliance courses and professional development. It will not include the trainings that are currently in CITI, Veoci, Salute, BrightSpace (School of Health Professionals), or Healthstream. Students and non-employees will continue to complete their required training(s) using the current process and systems.

Historical data from PeopleSoft will be the last 3 years in WolfieONE. Taleo will have the last 90 days and if you are looking for any historical data in Campus Solutions (Student Information Systems) or RF (EBS), that will remain in the same systems as it is today.

The HR Administrator will be trained not to terminate the person, just the assignment, and change their status in WolfieONE.

Yes. It's a role in Oracle Cloud Recruiting.

Campus card users will still need to go somewhere to get their picture taken for the ID badge. Journeys in WolfieONE will direct the employee to the right place, but some steps sit outside the system.

Taleo will not be retiring until we are live on WolfieONE. 

Employees will not have the ability to update their picture in WolfieONE.

Yes. 

Due to the current use of paper timesheets by many employees, historical time and attendance data will not be available in WolfieONE. However, for all employees whether they previously reported time through SOLAR or via paper timesheets current accrual balances will be reflected in WolfieONE.

Once it is approved, it will automatically populate into the timesheet.

There is an option in Human Capital Management (HCM) learning to record the external training that was received elsewhere and add it to your own transcript. Alternatively, the person can use the Skills and qualifications area (Employee self-service) to list those additional certifications.