​​Phase 1: Budget, ​Finance, and Procurement Module Implementation

​​Review Redesigned Business Process Maps

The Luma project team held Business Process Redesign sessions from November 2019 to January 2020. These sessions brought together 280 state experts representing 48 agencies to discuss what the current state processes are and why. That information was compared with industry best practices to create a map of the processes that will be used during system configuration for Luma. The Luma project team has released these process maps for a statewide review!​



Click the following links to access the respective process maps for your review.

​​Download the file and navigate to specific process maps through the Table of Contents or bookmarks. ​

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​PLEASE KEEP IN MIND: Business processes are similar to a roadmap, telling the Luma system the successful path to get from a process starting point to the destination. The roadmap shows all of the tasks necessary to get from point A to point B but does not dictate HOW those tasks can be accomplished. We are all eager to see how the Luma system will support the State's business activities. The software system has robust configuration capabilities that provide options to select the best fit for statewide needs. Communications around how the system operates will be developed and delivered in conjunction with the configuration of the Luma system.​



How to Read and Review a Process Map

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Consider the following Guiding Principles as you review the process maps:​

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​​A Statewide Effort

Luma is a statewide modernization effort. Thank you to everyone who participated in the business process redesign sessions held from November 2019 to January 2020! 


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Luma Budget Module

​Due to the complexities of government budgeting, our software​ provider Infor CloudSuite offered a partnership with Sherpa Government Solutions. Sherpa is a boutique public sector budgeting software and consulting firm founded in 2004.

The proposed Budget Formulation and Management (BFM) software has been implemented at some of the largest and most complex state and local organizations. Sherpa’s consulting team has implemented more than 100 public sector budgeting projects and averages more than 20 years of direct public sector experience. This team is part of the entire process, from implementation to support.​​​

 

The budgeting solution moves the State’s budget development processes into a single system, including revenue and expenditure planning, cost allocation, base budget development (technical adjustments), agency decision packages, budget office review, reporting, analysis, scenario building, performance monitoring, and budget monitoring. In doing so, the budget module provides:

  • Immediate access to budget, performance and financial information
  • Elimination of redundant data entry and reconciliation processes
  • Elimination of external cuff systems and data residing outside of the tool
  • Ability to track decisions and open items
  • Improved security
  • Lower operational costs
  • Systems that easy to use and roll-out to new or infrequent users
  • ​Systems that are integrated with budgetary and administrative procedures​

Budge​t Formulation Management (BFM)

BFM supports the critical workflow and analysis requirements in public sector budgeting. BFM provides budget formulation, budget review and decision tracking, base budget development, incremental budgeting, capital programming, strategic planning, budget allocation, budget transfers, and supplemental appropriations.
BFM provides comprehensive personnel cost forecasting, allowing users to forecast salaries and benefits by position, employee, job class, and bargaining unit. Positions can be assigned to incremental decision packages with all the calculations and formulas automatically applied to provide consistent and accurate labor costs. Built on a data structure specifically designed for speed and reporting. BFM table structure provides an environment where any user, at any technical skill level, can prepare their own ad-hoc queries, execute models, and create budget scenarios that meet the complex needs of state budgeting.

 
BFM meets the requirements of all components of the budget cycle, from integrating with source data, preparing budget requests, tracking recommended and legislative changes, through reports and publications and posting the budgets into the financial system. BFM will deliver:

 
  • Operating budget development including the ability to save any number of budget phases, expenses, revenues, FTE’s, attachments and supporting text.
  • Personnel forecasting that will forecast salaries, wages, benefits, supplemental pays, while modeling for inflation, union negotiations, and vacancy management.
  • Capital programming with the ability to build project budgets over multiple years with numerous funding sources, subprojects, line items, phases, etc. The system will track scope and budgetary changes over the projects' entire duration from initial concept and planning to completion.
  • Insert narrative and explanatory text wherever needed. The text will flow into user reports and into published documents.
  • Budget implementation capabilities that systematize the development of monthly, quarterly and annual allotments and spending plans. Tracks performance on a monthly, quarterly and annual basis with integrated expenditure projections including salaries and benefits. Provides forms for requesting budget transfers and supplemental appropriations.
  • Budget forms that can be configured to use client-specific dimensions, read-only data columns (i.e. prior year actuals, original budget, etc.) and any number of data entry columns. Forms can be associated with programmatic initiatives, new service levels, and project phases. Allowing reports to be produced without any manual intervention.
  • Audit trail on all budget entries to ensure data can be traced to the user with a timestamp and reason for the change.
  • Performance management with the ability to track metrics (outputs, inputs, outcomes, etc.) All performance metrics can be connected to strategic missions, goals, strategies, objectives, etc.
  • Performance management can be linked directly to Organizations, Programs, and chart of account elements.
  • Integration with Excel; not only can users upload their requests from Excel with a full audit trail they can also export any report to Excel.​​​​

Luma Finance Module

Infor Financials 

Infor Financials will help improve business transparency and strengthen financial discipline with proven functionality covering core financial management, budgetary control, project and grant accounting, and cash management. As part of the Infor Financials foundation, we deliver a flexible, configurable chart of account structure to accommodate our customers’ needs. Infor provides the ability to define multiple hierarchical rollups for each COA element. We define which hierarchy is used for processing (i.e. budgetary control) and can define as many others as needed for internal, external and regulatory needs.

Infor Financials delivers a variety of online reports and inquiry views for users to have immediate visibility into important information, such as budgetary control and expenditure analysis. For ACFR production, we offer Infor Business Intelligence (BI) infrastructure to produce necessary reports. Infor BI is fully integrated with the financials foundation and recognizes solution configuration, including COA elements and data values, hierarchies, and reporting bases. Infor Global Ledger has a unique concept called reporting basis that will​ expedite the ability to easily produce various ACFR and other regulatory reports.

Infor Global Ledger

Global Ledger serves as the foundation for the State’s financial activities; it is where organizations design and establish their Chart of Accounts structure and values within the financial management applications. In addition to serving as the accounting foundation, Global Ledger also helps the State to easily capture, analyze, and report
transactional information. Global Ledger works tightly with all Infor business management applications so you can transfer data securely among applications and to anyone who needs to know. Global Ledger supports unlimited financial calendars that allow you to accommodate different fiscal year ends and other reporting requirements. Unlimited ledgers and basis reporting allow you to deliver financial information for regional regulatory requirements, management reporting requirements, consolidations, or other reporting needs. And unlimited dimension strings allow you to customize the information you track and report on for your organization, including non-financial data.

 
Global Ledger delivers a flexible, configurable chart of account structure to accommodate our customers’ needs. As delivered, there are four primary structural elements: Entity/Fund, Account, Accounting Unit, and Project. We, then, provide 10 additional user-defined structural elements that customers can activate and use as needed. For all elements, customers can adjust the display labels, display order, and define if each element is required for entry. Global Ledger serves as the budgetary control center of the financial management suite, encompassing both actual and encumbrance entries, making the relationship between the two transparent and synchronized. Once
budgets are approved within Sherpa, they are integrated into Global Ledger where budgetary control rules are defined. These controls create and manage budgetary impact for sub-module transactions such as requisitions and purchase orders. Pre-encumbrances or encumbrances automatically liquidate upon settlement of a subsequent
transaction.

 
Close Management delivers tools you need to reduce time worked, errors, risks, and costs by eliminating cumbersome, inefficient, and untrustworthy manual processes. With the solution’s automated workflows and consolidation processes, you’ll be able to execute the closing process more quickly, giving you more time to focus on strategy and analysis. 

Project Ledger

Project Ledger is a comprehensive project accounting module with robust billing and revenue management capabilities. Project Ledger is engineered to accommodate the complex and often conflicting requirements of your users. By tracking the accounting aspect of projects (e.g. “non-GL”) in a separate ledger, information becomes
readily accessible to both Project Managers and internal accountants whenever and wherever they need it. From tracking daily project activity to grantor billing, Project Ledger transforms your organization so you can effectively manage the accounting of your projects — from inception to completion. Combined with Grant Accounting, it
provides you a means for a complete, end-to-end project or program accounting.
 
Within Project Ledger, users can:
  • Define alternate reporting calendars, which may differ from the standard fiscal calendar
  • Define roles and assign resources to those roles
  • Perform cost allocations for costs that are shared across projects
  • Define Periods of Performance for acceptable date ranges for requisitions, purchase order, invoices, and so on, with different dates for each type of transaction
  • Review and manage project costs and funding
​​Project Ledger also acts as the information bridge between the needs of the field accounting and central financial accounting functions. It provides a centralized repository for maintaining and analyzing information related to individual projects, whether the end product is a fixed asset, a service deliverable, or a strategic review of your internal operations. It allows your organization to manage the life cycle of programs, capital investment, and internal projects. Project Accounting was created specifically to address
the unique requirements of project-centric organizations. You gain comprehensive functionality, automation, and integration with this system. Your managers can view immediate project costing status to respond quickly when financial or operational issues arise.

 

Grant Accounting

Grant Accounting enables you to optimize the business side of your grant-funded programs by helping to reduce costs, automate system-wide grant processes, eliminate redundant systems and tasks, deliver real-time role-based information and help ensure regulatory compliance. In light of increasing regulatory and financial pressures,
organizations often struggle with a number of critical issues, such as tracking and controlling grant-funded expenditures, handling effort reporting, billing and collecting from grantors and understanding the financial aspects of grant-related activities. Grant Accounting is helping organizations to manage their programs more strategically, reduce their risks and become better stewards of their grant resources. 

 
Grant Accounting is tightly coupled with Infor Project Ledger. Programs or projects defined in Project Ledger are linked to grants using a one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, or many-to-many relationship. This allows grant-relateexpenditures to be tracked by project or program, grant, grantor, CFDA number, ARRA classification, or
user-defined funding source. Grant Accounting allows the State to track funding down to the transaction level, without having to key in one or more funding sources for each transaction. This arrangement allows for maximum transparency and efficiency. Grant Accounting is grantee-based; grantor functions, including pass-through and
sub-recipients, can be managed using the Project Ledger and procurement areas of Infor CloudSuite.

 

Payables and Matching

Infor Payables & Matching gives you comprehensive payables functionality, including vendor maintenance, invoice processing, payment processing, and regulatory reporting and compliance. You get real-time visibility into vendor invoices and approval processes to better monitor and escalate the payables process. From routine operations to
exception handling and accounting, you’ll be able to automate and streamline labor-intensive processes to reduce costs.

 
Infor Payables supports the ability to manage a shared vendor master across the various State agencies. Within a single vendor, the State can track all vendor addresses (solicitation, order, remittance) and locations, each with their own contacts, invoicing defaults, and location balances without taking up extra space or having to create
additional vendors within the vendor master file. Additionally, Infor Payables supports parent-child relationships for vendors with separate FEIN numbers, but a share a corporate relationship.

Cash Management

Infor Cash Management is a single solution with comprehensive cash management capabilities that can help improve your bank reconciliation processing and strengthen your banking relationship. This solution allows you to monitor cash positions, create cash forecasts, and validate actual transactions against forecasts. It also offers a rules-based setup, with interfaces to Global Ledger, creating a flexible system that supports a variety of techniques for managing and automating bank reconciliation, along with multiple short- and long-term cash forecasting methods.​

Luma Procurement Module

Purchasing simplifies procurement processes by establishing vendor pricing agreements and contracts, creating, importing, and maintaining item information, and creating and issuing several types of purchase orders. Goods can be received centrally or at individual departments, as well as with smartphones and tablet devices when requesters
are away from their desks. The system offers great flexibility while giving your organization a very sophisticated supply chain management system. A result is an efficient tool that reduces errors and keeps suppliers in the ‘virtual supply chain’ informed. In addition, Purchasing improves the accuracy and timeliness of the internal information flow to suppliers, which translates to enhanced vendor relationships and an improved organizational image.​

 

Procurement Card

Procurement Cards are designed to make purchasing more efficient, flexible, and convenient. The State can set purchasing rules and policies, so you can give staff the freedom to purchase the items they need to keep your business running on a daily basis. Audit, review, and approval controls are already built into the system so that
your employees can obtain new parts, supplies, or services while avoiding the relatively high cost of getting the paperwork approved for low-cost purchases.

 
​Infor Procurement Card module works with the State’s bank’s procurement card program to give you the flexibility to enhance the use of procurement cards, without limiting control over accounting processes or sacrificing visibility into what is being purchased. With the Procurement Card, you can implement and manage your procurement program and help ensure that your employees acquire and receive goods quickly, efficiently, and on an as-needed basis.
With your Infor Procurement Card, you can:
  • Limit the use of purchase orders for low-cost, high-volume purchases.
  • Reduce out-of-pocket costs and expense reimbursements.
  • Pay from one statement instead of multiple vendor invoices.
  • Match procurement card charges to purchase orders.
  • Link merchants to vendors for easy 1099 reporting.
  • Capture additional details like purchase categories and manufacturer details.
  • Tie purchases to accounts and activities.
  • Include procurement card purchases in your overall spend analysis.

Requisitions

Requisitions are designed to extend the advantages of requisitions beyond the purchasing department. Departmental casual users will be able to create their own requisitions online, while your organization automates the requisition approval process. With this tool, users can quickly adopt online requisitioning as a single point of entry for all goods and service requests. Requisitioning offers templates and other time-saving features, adapted from the world of e-commerce, to quickly make every internal client a productive use of the system with minimal training, including punch-out. Simplified tools give casual users the same powerful search capabilities that power users enjoy, without having to leave the online requisition environment they use to create requests.

 

Procurement Punch-Out

Procurement Punch-Out saves your purchasing staff even more time by allowing end-users to shop directly at vendor-maintained Web sites, reducing the demands of maintaining an internal item master. By empowering end-users to assume more responsibility for their purchases — within organizational rules and negotiated contracts —

 
Requisitions and Procurement Punchout contribute to a faster fulfillment process, thereby boosting satisfaction. And, because built-in controls decrease the potential for off-contract buying, you may significantly reduce your purchasing costs. Procurement Punchout includes these key features:
  • Enables you to punch out to multiple vendor web sites
  • Includes support for cXML punchout standards to help you extend your trading community to new vendors
  • Gives you the option to work with your vendors to set up your organization’s view of their web sites
  • Leverages Requisitions to provide conformity to transaction rules for user access, budget checks, and manager approvals​

Supplier Portal 

Infor Supplier Portal is a collaboration toolset designed to maximize efficiency for Infor customers and their diverse supplier base. Supplier Portal provides suppliers with web-based access to self-register, respond to solicitations, electronically negotiate terms and conditions, order, invoice, and payment details, electronic invoice creation, as
well as tools that allow suppliers to manage their own accounts. Supplier Portal provides visibility into supplier invoices and payment history. Visibility allows everyone, from buyer to supplier to accounts payable manager, to take corrective action and mitigate risk.

 
Infor Strategic Sourcing is a role-based application that gives your organization best practices to save you time during the full-sourcing lifecycle from bid creation through the award. Strategic Sourcing can help you simplify the process of doing business with your suppliers, and vice versa.

 
Infor Contract Management is designed to make it simpler, faster, less expensive, and more secure for your organization to create, manage, and monitor contracts. With Contract Management, you’ll simplify the contract creation process, allowing your buyers to spend more time on more strategic tasks. If you’re using Strategic Sourcing, information already captured with that application can automatically populate the contract templates in ​Contract Management.

 

​System Integration Testing (SIT)


System Integration Testing is a cycle testing cycle that the Luma project team will utilize to test business processes work as designed across integrated forms, reports, interfaces, and data conversions within Luma. The intention of different testing cycles allows the team to test discrete functionality first, then progress through to end-to-end business scenario testing. ​

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System Integration Testing (SIT) 1 & 2 will begin fall 2020. SIT will involve agency personnel and seeks to test the end to end functionality of the Luma system including all Forms, Reports, Integrations, Conversions, Enhancements, Workflows, COA build-outs, and configurations. It attempts to confirm that the system performs as designed.​


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System Integration Testing - Timeline



 


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The ​objectives of SIT are to:

  • Confirm the business process functional requirements have passed testing scripts and scenarios.
  • Confirm delivered application/module design meets business process needs.
  • Confirm individual components within an application/module function perform as designed.
  • Confirm business logic within custom objects has been implemented correctly for standard, boundary, and negative test conditions.
  • Validate system configuration has been correctly completed.
  • Confirm the integration between systems and components (this includes the testing of all Interfaces).
  • Validate that all inbound and outbound Interfaces function as designed.
  • Validate all formulas and calculations meet business process and requirements.
  • ​Continue the validation of converted data.​

System Integration Testing Cycle 1 (SIT 1) - Agency Participation​​

Agencies were selected to participate in System Integration Testing Cycle 1 based on the following set of criteria:

  • The agency is in Cohort 1- 4.
  • The agency is home to a Luma team member.
  • The agency has a completed Chart of Accounts
  • The agency has a completed configuration
  • The agency has completed interfaces and conversions.
  • Agency complexity/size.​

As the Luma project team continues into the System Integration Testing Cycle 2 more agencies will be included in testing. This ramp-up of participation will continue into User Acceptance Testing.  ​

​​​​​User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is an end-to-end test of all business processes ensuring day-to-day business operations can be completed within the Luma system. UAT will begin in Spring 2021.  In UAT, a broader group of state agency users will follow scenarios to test the functionality of the Luma system.​

User Acceptance Testing (UAT) will begin in spring 2021. In UAT, a broader group of state agency users will follow scenarios to test the functionality of the Luma system. UAT is the system "dress rehearsal" and will confirm if the State is ready to move the ERP into the production environment and go-live.​​


 
 
 
 


 

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The objectives of the UAT are to:

  • Confirm that the application and business processes are able to support ‘Day-in-the-Life’ business functions.

  • Confirm data migration from legacy systems to Luma is accurate and meets the business needs.

  • Use a subset of the integration tests to confirm that the configuration supports end-to-end processing.

  • Validate security configurations and integrations are production-ready.

  • Validate that Interfaces and the Reports are providing the expected user experience.

  • Confirm compliance with policies and procedures.​​​