Departments took several weeks to provide budget detail to TSPR and the staff stated that they did not manage their budgets across all budget categories. Although the district purchased and provided the training recommended by the software vendor to district employees, the associate superintendent of Business and Finance said that CIMS was installed on an accelerated schedule to satisfy Y2K compliance. Various members of the Purchasing staff agreed that the installation was rapid and said that they needed more training to assess the full capacity of the system and use its features to improve job performance. For fiscal 2000, the district had issued 9,494 requisitions through March 2000. This volume level combined with manual processes, incomplete information and lack of experience with the new software has caused a significant problem with vendor payment.
Training is also an important component and is viewed as a continuous process.
Due to the shortened implementation timeframe, not all business processes or training activities were thoroughly covered in the initial 154 training sessions provided to staff. However, all critical issues were addressed. Training is implemented following the software module installation schedule. As each module was added, staff development was provided for the staff using that particular module. Over the next three months, the remaining modules were installed and the respective staff trained.