By Casey Maxwell
Tracking assets is important in any industry. When it comes to digitally tracking the state’s assets, it is imperative because not only do they pertain to providing government services, but also how citizens’ data is stored and shared.
The Office of Management and Enterprise Services works with each of Oklahoma’s 189 agencies to ensure their data is accurate, protected and accessible to help serve their customers. Our agency customers can mitigate risk and increase transparency reporting of these assets with the latest updates to PeopleSoft Financials asset tracking solution provided by OMES.
The Oklahoma Department of Veteran Affairs’ Deputy CFO, Jennifer Reeves, collaborated with OMES and Lisa Whiteman, State Inventory Control Officer from the State Finance Center of Excellence to update the tracking software earlier this year.
The Challenge
Keeping track of ODVA’s assets is a critical step in their success of providing resources, services and support to over 50,000 military veterans residing in Oklahoma.
ODVA’s asset system reached its end of life and was no longer being updated by the vendor to the latest security standards. This left important data unprotected and Jennifer Reeves made it her mission to get an updated system that could not only meet security standards but also provide options for improving their agency asset tracking altogether.
“By switching to an updated system, we can streamline asset tracking and provide improved reporting features,” said Jennifer Reeves, ODVA Deputy CFO.
The Solution
OMES updated the PeopleSoft Financials enterprise platform from on-premise to the latest cloud infrastructure model, moving it from version 5 to 33 and soon to version 40.
PeopleSoft Financials is an online software providing state agency financial teams the ability to transact and view financial systems, online workflows and more.
“The updates have increased performance in networking, compute and storage overall for the system but also for the various applications within PeopleSoft,” said Ayana Wilkins, Financial Enterprise Application Director for OMES. “This is transforming how our agencies report and track assets and their financials.”
Additionally, moving to the Oracle Cloud Infrastructure allows the state of Oklahoma to stay up to date with the upcoming PeopleSoft upgrades providing OMES the ability to continually offer new functionality for state agencies over the coming months.
Security was another big factor in choosing OCI. PeopleSoft Financials was designed on security-first principles. It includes network virtualization and pristine physical host deployment. PeopleSoft Financials’ OCI helps reduce risk from advanced, persistent threats.
OCI benefits from tiered defenses and highly secure operations that span from the physical hardware in our data centers to the web layer, in addition to the protections and controls available in our cloud.
Tracking ODVA assets with PeopleSoft Financials
Once started, the transition took just under a month to implement and now ODVA is using the asset module to track assets daily.
Efficiencies with the new asset tracking tool include faster data entry and purchase orders can now automatically upload the important data that helps ODVA provide services to their customers and share data with other agencies more easily.
Tracking assets digitally has also allowed ODVA to be transparent with their finances.
Not only does ODVA benefit from asset tracking, but all Oklahoma state agencies also benefit from asset tracking because to serve Oklahomans, their data needs to be securely shared and stored.
ODVA plans on utilizing PeopleSoft Financials for inventory tracking of their consumable resources in addition to asset tracking. The PeopleSoft Financials asset tracking they are currently using is to track things like equipment, fixtures and furniture, while the inventory tracking will be for things like products, parts and materials.
Because ODVA has many centers across Oklahoma, this would help them find things quickly. For example, when the Veteran Center in Ardmore needed a new printer, they could look and see Norman’s center had an extra device and use it instead of purchasing a new one for the agency. This process will save time and money for ODVA and improve the way they deliver their services to Oklahoma veterans.
The successful partnership between OMES, ODVA and the state’s Financial Center of Excellence is a great example of how we at state government are developing and transforming our processes with improved technology. Whether tracking assets or providing essential services for our veterans, we will continue to improve our services for veterans and their families.
