As highlighted in December, we have commenced a project (Digital Core) to make improvements to the HR, Finance and Procurement systems and services we all work with.

The HR, Finance and Procurement teams are reviewing their systems and services, and the way in which we engage with them. Processes such as the way in which we book annual leave, book onto training courses, claim expenses and make purchases will be reviewed.

Our vision is to have a service that is simple, easy to use and delivers improved best practice processes. A one-stop shop for all core HR, Finance and Procurement services will allow us to deliver a consistent service that can be securely accessed anywhere, anytime and on multiple devices. We also want to be able to empower managers and their teams through dashboards and auto-reporting.

Unfortunately, our current systems do not enable us to achieve this vision. As systems are not integrated, considerable manual workarounds and intervention is required and this also limits management reporting capability. Our systems are complex, meaning that we do not always have accurate data and a single version of the truth. A significant amount of time, effort and cost is required to keep our systems running and secure in the face of new online threats

We have begun work to capture feedback from across the University and procure a new solution(s) which is aligned to providing the capabilities we need for the University today, and which will support our ambitions for the future.

To do this a series of online workshops are underway to gather feedback from all parts of the University which will help shape the requirements that we will we need. Faculty Operations Directors and Department Directors have helped us identify colleagues that may be able to take part in the workshops to input and share their views.

We look forward to keeping you updated on this project as it progresses over the coming months, along with many more opportunities for you to get involved and share your views.

If you have any questions or feedback regarding this project, please email IS-Communications@nottingham.ac.uk.