On Tuesday, Sept. 3 at 8am, SAP R/3 became the MIT financial system of record. Members of the Management Reporting and Financial Operations Project team, along with many personnel from the central administrative offices, worked much of the Labor Day weekend in order to achieve this "go-live" date.
There has been some confusion in the community about the current functionality of the EREQ system. Authorized users will still be able to use EREQ to create requisitions. The DAPO (Department Awarded Purchase Order) limit has been raised from the current limit of $1,000 to $2,500 to allow the DAPO process to be used for a greater range of requisitions. All other restrictions and rules on the use of DAPOs remain in place.
The process for obtaining DAPOs is unchanged. They will still be allocated immediately in EREQ, and purchase order numbers will be shown on-line. Users will need to save this number, however, because they will no longer be able to query EREQ to get the DAPO number after the transaction has been completed.
When requisitions do not qualify for a DAPO, the EREQ system will continue to be used to enter information. A member of the Purchasing Department will call the requisitioner in no more than four hours with the PO number.
As Senior Vice President William R. Dickson said in his letter to the community, the change from the older "legacy" systems to SAP is a major one which has required more than a year's work by many MIT employees. "I ask that the community at large give the Comptroller's Accounting Office, the Purchasing Department and the Management Reporting Team some leeway while the transition from existing systems to the SAP R/3 financial system is taking place," he said.
Further information on the implementation of SAP at MIT, and the on-line version of the SneAk Preview newsletter, can be found at the SAP Web site at . Comments or questions about the SAP implementation can be sent by email to .
A version of this article appeared in MIT Tech Talk on September 11, 1996.
