Noteworthy News

Statewide Financial System Implementation

August 12, 2011

OMH News Fiscally Speaking
Statewide Financial System (SFS) Implementation:
Imparts to New York State and Office of Mental Health Business

What is "SFS?"

New York State is embarking upon significant change in the way we do business through the development and implementation of the Statewide Financial System (SFS). The SFS Program is a New York State government initiative to replace its over 25-year-old Central Account System and several agency financial management systems with one integrated, statewide system. In brief:

• Who is involved?
  • All Executive Agencies, Office of State Comptroller (OSC), Courts, and the Attorney General
• What are the expected outcomes?
  • Operational efficiencies delivered through new financial business processes
  • Enhanced statewide reporting and management capabilities
• When?
  • This is a multi-phase initiative with deployments anticipated to begin in October 2011
• How?
  • By updating the 30-year-old Central Accounting System with a modernized web-based application

The SFS is one of the most significant business transformations for the State of New York since the advent of the computer and the internet.

What will SFS entail?

The goal of SFS is to enhance state government efficiency, effectiveness, integrity and accountability by integrating statewide business process. This effort will provide improved financial data exchange throughout the State. The SFS solution will implement several core financial management functions over multiple phases, with the first phase of functionality scheduled to be rolled out in October 2011.

What does this mean for OMH and its contractors?

OMH will experience the many benefits of the easy-to-use system for entering all financial transaction data with more current, detailed, and better organized data, automated workflow, the ability to effortlessly track the status of transactions, less time extracting, obtaining, formatting and reconciling financial information, as well as improved capabilities for reporting, queries, and analysis.

More specifically, with the advent of the SFS Vendor File, a single managed database of NYS vendors, duplicate records will be eliminated and the State's ability to report on vendor activities, such as purchasing and payments, will be improved. Vendors will be able to maintain their own vendor record through self-service. The Vendor File is being populated with over 200,000 vendors with whom the State currently does business. New vendors are enrolled by OMH request when OMH decides to do business with the vendor. If you are currently a vendor with OMH or will be in the future, please refer to OSC's web site "Vendors Doing Business with NYS for more information.

Resources:

To learn more about the Statewide Financial System: NYS Statewide Financial System

For questions on this topic, contact OMH SFS.

Category: NYS OMH

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