This may not sound like the most thrilling session (especially straight after lunch), but I’m hoping they are going to talk about integration with corporate finance systems. Talis Keystone seems to be the main ‘integration’ product – we are going to get a case study from Liverpool Hope University.

What is Talis Keystone? Uses standards (IT and Library standards) to allow integration.

At Liverpool Hope – small budget, with purchasing from consortium approved suppliers, as well as credit card purchases from Amazon. They use the ‘Agresso’ finance system, recently changed from the ‘Opera’ finance system.

The drivers were to avoid double data entry, getting up-to-date financial records that match on both systems, ability to search Finance system with standard data (e.g. use same order numbers on both systems). They decided to deal only with One-off purchases to start with, and couldn’t deal with purchase card in the first instance.

Need to be able to deal with New orders, good received, cancellations, part receipting, part cancellations etc.

Started by having a very detailed meeting with all the relevant players – Talis, Library, Finance, IT. They flow diagrammed the Library acquisitons process and the Finance process, matching the two together. Clearly identified what was going to be included, and what excluded in the project. Also identified limitations – e.g. Agresso could not accept changed information e.g. price, quantity (this has to be amended manually) – this sounds like quite a serious limitation to me!

They then had a followup meeting looking at data fields in both systems, and how they mapped to each other.

After getting the technical side sorted, they did structured testing, with both ‘standard’ scenarios, and some ‘try to break the system’ unexpected but realistic scenarios. Load testing. Testing was a time consuming part of the project.

Now at the point of implementation – need to sort out who does what (finance or library), especially for problem solving, need to automate some procedures, need to put in appropriate monitoring, and look at working practices.

Although not live yet, it sounds like a great project. I’ve been looking at how we handle financial transactions, and I think we might want to look at running a similar project.

This may not sound like the most thrilling session (especially straight after lunch), but I’m hoping they are going to talk about integration with corporate finance systems. Talis Keystone seems to be the main ‘integration’ product – we are going to get a case study from Liverpool Hope University.

What is Talis Keystone? Uses standards (IT and Library standards) to allow integration.

At Liverpool Hope – small budget, with purchasing from consortium approved suppliers, as well as credit card purchases from Amazon. They use the ‘Agresso’ finance system, recently changed from the ‘Opera’ finance system.

The drivers were to avoid double data entry, getting up-to-date financial records that match on both systems, ability to search Finance system with standard data (e.g. use same order numbers on both systems). They decided to deal only with One-off purchases to start with, and couldn’t deal with purchase card in the first instance.

Need to be able to deal with New orders, good received, cancellations, part receipting, part cancellations etc.

Started by having a very detailed meeting with all the relevant players – Talis, Library, Finance, IT. They flow diagrammed the Library acquisitons process and the Finance process, matching the two together. Clearly identified what was going to be included, and what excluded in the project. Also identified limitations – e.g. Agresso could not accept changed information e.g. price, quantity (this has to be amended manually) – this sounds like quite a serious limitation to me!

They then had a followup meeting looking at data fields in both systems, and how they mapped to each other.

After getting the technical side sorted, they did structured testing, with both ‘standard’ scenarios, and some ‘try to break the system’ unexpected but realistic scenarios. Load testing. Testing was a time consuming part of the project.

Now at the point of implementation – need to sort out who does what (finance or library), especially for problem solving, need to automate some procedures, need to put in appropriate monitoring, and look at working practices.

Although not live yet, it sounds like a great project. I’ve been looking at how we handle financial transactions, and I think we might want to look at running a similar project.