NBS Update—Travel and General Ledger/Federal Administrator

The NIH Travel System and the General Ledger/Federal Administrator components of the NIH Business System (NBS) went live in the fall of 2003. The NIH community and the NBS Project Team have worked diligently to ensure their success.

As they began using these systems, NIH users suggested improvements. NBS evaluated these suggestions and, with the software developers, “recoded” some of the NBS programs. This feedback from the user community resulted in changes that have made the system easier to use

•       Travel System

As of December 2003, approximately 20,000 FY 2004 travel authorizations and 14,000 vouchers have been processed. The NBS Change Management Team has trained approximately 2,600 NIH Travel System users—the vast majority (2,050) before deployment.

•       General Ledger/Federal Administrator

Users have received a combination of on-site coaching, on-the-job training, formal classes, and hands-on seminars to prepare them for using the Oracle Financials System.

In the four months since it began operations on September 1, the NBS Management Center Help Desk logged over 6,700 help calls and resolved 96% of them. Since October 1, the volume of Help Desk calls has decreased, indicating that the Travel and Financial Systems are beginning to stabilize.

More Information

Changes to the NBS systems are communicated to users through a variety of means:

•       help points of contact (HPOC) and organization administrator (OA) seminars
•       special training sessions for users
•       e-mail
•       the NBS Web site

Keep informed by visiting the NBS Web site, which is updated often.