In September Mr. Gauthier asked the Business and Finance directors to come up
with a plan for continuous improvement for the division. He left it up to the directors to recommend a process for achieving this goal.

   After several weeks of discussion, the directors determined that we needed to identify our core business process, evaluate them and then make recommendations to Mr. Gauthier for consideration. Our goal was to get an early start on Phase 2 of Strategic Planning and
SACS Self-Study.

   We first wrote a Mission/Vision/ Core Values Statement that is the foundation of our division. We identified 75 core business processes within the division for consideration. These were then further grouped and ranked and 9 were identified and recommended to Mr. Gauthier for his consideration and approval.

   Team Leaders were selected and 9 teams comprised of 34 people were given assignments. Thirteen team leaders were trained and sent forward to complete their assignments. We identified some software tools necessary to help the teams to complete their assignment and are providing training on their use.

   Many of our core business processes in this first-tier were chosen because of the impact of the University System moving to PeopleSoft Financials. PeopleSoft Financials will change the way our business office will operate. We will go on-line with PeopleSoft January 2002.

   The initial phase of each team is to map-out our current core business process, that is, to develop a flow chart of how work is performed. We will use the results of this work to meet one of our core values of "continuous improvement."

   How do our efforts relate to the Strategic Planning and SACS Self-Study? We have completed a cross match of the Bread and Butter Goals assigned to Mr. Gauthier with our core business processes and further cross matched these to the "must statements" within the SACS criteria to see if our strategies address both. Where there is weakness, we are identifying steps to address these.

   We have identified non-B&F personnel to assist us in some of our initial work within the teams and will bring more faculty, staff and students into the process in a review phase.

   Our work will be posted on the Web at a new site under business and finance and/or at a common web site for all activity if that is the objective.

   We are in the process of putting some time constraints on our teams to have their work completed prior to the end of the semester.

   Keep in mind that this will not be the end of what we do. Our goal is to work through all of the core business process we have identified and this may take us a year or more to do. Again, our objective is continuous improvement and service to university constituents.

   This completes my report.

   Jerry Mock