Financial Management Help Desks

As the Financial Management help desks have been added to DOI NBC consolidated Customer Support Center (CSC), customers of the NBC FMLOB can now dial a single number to access help desk agents in support to the vast number of systems supported: FBMS, Momentum, CFS-Hyperion, Oracle, FFS, GovTrip, E2Solutions, IDEAS-PD/EC, etc.

NBC Customer Support Center: 1-888-FOR-1NBC (1-888-367-1622)
Choose Option 5 for Financial and Travel Systems:

• Press 1 for Travel
• Press 2 for Oracle, Momentum, FFS, or CFS-Hyperion
• Press 3 for IDEAS PD/EC
• Press 4 for FBMS
• Press 5 for Finance General

The changes described above do not affect the Charge Card Support Center, the Quarters Program (QMIS) Help Desk, or the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS) GovTrip Support Desk. The management of these services, listed below, remains at the Financial Management and Budget Directorate and users should continue to utilize the phone numbers listed here.

• Charge Card Support Center: 303-969-5588
• Quarters Program Help Desk: 303-969-5696
• FWS GovTrip Support Desk: 303-969-5100

Improving Customer Service

The NBC has embarked on several new customer service initiatives to address the concerns and implement recommendations from a recent Customer Satisfaction assessment. As we renew our commitment to provide high quality services, we are also re-evaluating our service delivery model to assure that we are providing the expected value and achieving the desired results.

The NBC’s Senior Leadership Team has asked management from all NBC Lines of Business to develop action plans focusing on four areas: Customer Service and Service Delivery; Costs and Transparency; Internal Collaboration; and Employee Empowerment. The FBD is in the process of implementing several measures to put into practice these NBC action plans.

We are adopting practices to ensure costs are reasonable, logical, and defendable. We will revalidate and reduce indirect costs where possible, schedule meetings with customers to explain the process of accumulating costs, and clarify the scope of services and costs in FY11 agreements. In addition, each IAA will include a detailed list of services unique to each customer. Now our customers can find the SLA metric reports on the NBC web site at www3.nbc.gov/customer/Finance/metrics. To promote better communication, we are establishing single points of contact (customer reps) for each customer. We are also developing a better approach to issue tracking and resolution, and are currently reviewing help desk tickets to summarize issues and define trends. Additionally, the General Accounting Branch launched a customer satisfaction survey to assess the customer’s satisfaction with problem resolution. We have implemented measures to empower our employees and allow them to acquire more knowledge about our customer base. We developed a comprehensive listing of customers identifying all services provided to each and created a reference “Customer Insight” guide. This document contains not only information about the services delivered to each of them, but also describes their missions and organizations.

NBC FMLOB FY2010 Accomplishments

• Completed two financial system Implementations. (See article below)
• Successfully transition additional National Park Service PCS support as of Oct 1, 2010.
• Transitioned finance work from Aviation Management Directorate in Boise to the Accounting Operations Services Division in Denver.
• Completed A-123 Appendix A financial transaction testing of internal controls over financial reporting. No significant deficiencies or material weaknesses were identified.
• Completed 16 A-123 program (non Appendix A) internal control reviews with no material weaknesses identified.
• Completed the SAS-70 audit engagement resulting in final opinion for the following NBC hosted financial systems:
  • The following systems passed all controls and received an unqualified (clean) opinion:
    • Hyperion Consolidated Financial System (CFS)
    • Federal Financial System (FFS)
    • Momentum Financials
    • Federal Personnel Payroll System (FPPS)
  • The following system failed one control of nine tested and received a qualified opinion:
    • Oracle Federal Financial (OFF)
• Oracle R12 Migration Portal is in production on the FBD customer web site.
• Participated at the National Travel Forum in Orlando and the National AGA conference in Orlando. NBC gave a presentation on PCS at the Travel Forum.
• Completed revamp of NBC web site as related to FBD customers and the public. Interactive organization charts were added to provide customers with detail on roles, responsibilities, and contact information in each FBD office.
• Completed and provided to customers an extensive NBC contact list which is updated for customers quarterly.

NBC Control and Compliance Program

The NBC’s Audit Liaison Office (ALO) completed another successful year administering OMB Circular A-123 Appendix A and Program guidance. The process begins with the ALO conducting risk assessments across the NBC Directorates where the program manager provides feedback to a web-based risk rating tool. That final risk score allows the NBC to schedule reviews based upon program risk for the upcoming fiscal year.

The NBC has 102 program areas called Assessable Units (AU’s) which equate to a product or service that are subject to review. In any given year, we review an average of 15-20 programs over a three year cycle. In addition, 18 reviews are completed every year by the Accounting Operations Service Division’s Internal Control and Audit Liaison Branch. That branch focuses primarily on financial transaction testing in compliance with Appendix A.

In FY 2010, 16 program reviews were completed. This review process includes documenting the business narratives and workflows, testing the identified controls and reporting on the areas under review. Please visit the NBC Control and Compliance Program page on the NBC Customer site at www3.nbc.gov/customer/Finance/compliance for a chart summarizing the areas reviewed with the number of Control Deficiencies (CD’s) and Recommended Process Improvements (RPI’s) found.

Oracle R12 Migration Update

We continue to move forward in making the new Oracle® Federal Financials (OFF) version available to our customers. The NBC has spent the past weeks evaluating the options of staying on our current path of upgrading to Oracle R12.1.2 or upgrading to version R12.1.3. Based upon our analysis, a decision was made to upgrade to version R12.1.3, with a planned "Go Live" date of February 2012. Some of the key benefits to coming up on R12.1.3 include:

• Makes the option available for our Oracle customers to purchase and install the Contract Lifecycle Management for Public Sector (CLM), released by Oracle in early September. Oracle CLM helps Federal organizations improve compliance, increase efficiency, and reduce costs by providing an integrated environment for processing both routine and complex procurement actions.
• Oracle R12.1.3 includes new product functionality, enhancements to existing functionality, and fixes for improved stability, security, and performance.

Additional information about the Oracle R12 migration can be found at the NBC customer site at www3.nbc.gov/customer/Finance/R12. Recent additions to the site include the posting of the Project Plan and Testing Strategy.

Financial Management Upcoming Events

The complete version of the FY11 NBC FMLoB Calendar is posted at http://www.nbc.gov/finance.

Financial Management and Budget Directorate (FBD)

OUR MISSION

To meet our customers’ federal financial management needs and exceed their expectations with integrity, quality and efficiency.

NBC CORE VALUES

Integrity – always doing the right thing
Accountability – doing what we said we would do with transparency
Customer Value – providing results that matter to our clients
Innovation – leveraging advances in business practices and technology to achieve our goals
Teamwork – working collaboratively with all stakeholders

ADDITIONAL FBD CORE VALUES

Excellence – outstanding quality and superior performance
Service – working for the public benefit
Professionalism – demonstrating competency, consideration and commitment
Diversity – valuing differences, mutual respect
Empowerment – balancing authority with accountability

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