Background
The Finance Shared Services team has been operational for about 3 months since its launch in December. We have processed some 13,000 tickets in that time, (at an average of about 1,300 a week), including about 50 travel requests a week, 30 single use Credit Cards a week, and 32 staff expense claims a week. The number of Open service tickets has averaged 1,300 at any one time during the period, and tickets have been open for an average of 15 days. We expect service demand to grow in the coming months as divisional spend restrictions are eased and the spring and summer conference season begins.
Now that the University re-financing package has been secured, we are in the process of recruiting at pace to the significant number of permanent vacant roles in the team (in order to speedily reverse the adverse impact of the staffing shortfall on the team’s performance). As a stable team with full staffing compliment and improved service performance outcomes are achieved (notably reduced service turnaround times), effort will be increasingly directed at streamlining and improving systems and processes uniformly across the University.
Service Delivery Approach:
- FSS service users will need to continue to use the current method of ordering and transacting requests within their Divisions/ Departments – so no changes there yet. Please continue to contact the FSS team using the same email address as you did before for your Division (as set out below):
| Division or Dept | |
| Division of Arts and Humanities | artshumsfinance@kent.ac.uk |
| Division of Computing, Engineering and Mathematical Sciences | cemsfinance@kent.ac.uk |
| Division of Human and Social Sciences | hssfinance@kent.ac.uk |
| Kent Business School | kbsfinance@kent.ac.uk |
| Division of Law, Society and Social Justice | lssjfinance@kent.ac.uk |
| Division of Natural Sciences | natsfinance@kent.ac.uk |
| IS Finance | isfinance@kent.ac.uk |
| Commercial Services and Estates Finance | csefinance@kent.ac.uk |
| Payments Office | paymentsoffice@kent.ac.uk |
| Expenses | expenses@kent.ac.uk |
- Each email request will interface with our TopDesk service management system, be assigned a TopDesk ticket number, and triaged to the appropriate FSS sub-team or staff to assist you with your request.
We therefore request that you do not copy in your Finance team into your service request emails for their information, because doing so would simply generate a series of unactionable service tickets for the same request which clogs up the system. Time spent on isolating and deleting such tickets delays the FSS team from dealing with actual requests.
We are currently aiming at replying to initial ticket requests within 5 working days where possible. Please do not chase requests before the target response time. If you have to follow up a particular request, do not send another email request. Instead simply reply to the initial ticket response email you would have received as this will ensure that all relevant information is kept together.
Exceptionally urgent service request escalations can be routed to either Susana Lawrence (S.Lawrence-577@kent.ac.uk) or to Paul Glover (P.Glover@kent.ac.uk).
Divisional Travel and Key Travel:
For many, booking travel on the Key Travel platform remains unchanged. However the process would have changed for a few others as we aim to streamline and standardise the travel booking process. As long as you have a traveller profile access to the Key Travel system you should now have the ability to book your own travel, subject of course to the normal University of Kent Travel Policy. If you do not have a traveller profile access yet but require one, please raise a request for this to be provided.
This should allow you to book your own rail tickets, as well as do your own search for flights and hotels etc.
You will need to ensure you have all your account codes ready to book.
Once your travel order is placed it will go to the finance team to be checked against your allocated budget on the codes submitted and then authorised accordingly. Note that travel bookings need 2 working days for approval, so bookings submitted on Friday afternoon (without prior communication) may lapse during the weekend will need to be submitted all over again on Monday.
Pipeline Activities and Projects:
As we continue to deploy the principles of Effectiveness and Efficiency, we are reviewing and looking to make systems and processes uniform and more efficient. There is much work to do, as we are addressing a number of the existing disparities between Divisions, as well as working towards various changes and projects. Current ongoing projects include:
- Invoicing Automation, using the latest in AI technology to read and process, submitted invoices into the UBW accounting system.
- Online form for Taxi Bookings
- Online form for Car Hire
- Online form for Conference attendance and the issuing of a one-off use credit cards to purchase.
- Online form for Students to claim their costs on Scholarship Grants.
- A new Finance Shared Services share point site.
- Review and update of the University Travel Policy to make it better fit for purpose.
- A single platform to gain approval to travel – encompassing the risk assessments, fitness to travel, insurance elements, and travel exceptions.
- A University wide pre-ordering system to capture all necessary approvals before orders/services are placed on the UKC finance ordering system.
Please bear with us as we implement these changes and train new staff to help us deliver a high quality service.