UB business systems transformed

Laptop and pen.

By Joe Ferguson

Published March 3, 2016 This content is archived.

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Joe Ferguson.

Joe Ferguson (UB Student, Class of 2019) was born in Sacramento, CA, but currently lives in Lockport, NY. He is studying Marketing/Public Relations and Communications. He hopes to get a job in as a marketing person or PR agent for a California-based company when he graduates.

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Starting in 2011, a team of developers from Enterprise Application Services, part of UB Information Technology, began replacing business systems that were stored on UB’s recently retired mainframe system.

"There were a lot of financial incentives for getting off the mainframe," Gary Pacer, Manager of Application Development with Enterprise Application Services, told UBIT News. "Our contract for the mainframe infrastructure was ending in 2015, and coupled with the cost of the environmental utilities to support it made this the perfect opportunity to move in a different direction."

The project was handled in two phases. The first phase focused on replacing UB’s financial systems, which was completed during July 2014. The new financial system introduced the E-budget feature, which allowed online budget adjustment and eliminated the need for paper form submissions.

UB’s Human Resources system replacement was more complex. The entire system was reworked to use a SUNY-based system as its core. This eliminated duplicative data entry and brought the university in closer alignment with the SUNY system. In addition, the new system provided increased functionality for onboarding new UB employees and paved the way for the campus to use SUNY’s Time and Attendance system, which was launched at UB during February 2016.

The modernization of UB’s older business systems was completed during July 2015, which allowed for the mainframe to be retired.