Implementing Oracle Student Financial Planning (OSFP) is the university’s first step toward moving to Oracle Student Cloud. In January 2021, the OSFP project officially entered the design, configure, and develop phase for the first release of the software. The full implementation consists of seven releases, the first of which will be available in October 2021, the beginning of the 2022-2023 financial aid cycle.
This initial phase includes business process reviews and technical preparation of the application. Specifically, the system functionality is reviewed, configuration items are addressed, reports and interface programs are designed, and new business processes and functional specifications are documented. These activities will prepare the team to develop and test the OSFP system.
Why Are We Doing This?
The OSFP project consolidates two financial aid processes, one in our legacy mainframe system and one in Banner, into a unified system. The implementation will allow the university to streamline financial aid processes to improve the experience for students, further enable regulatory compliance, and significantly reduce manual processes allowing for more student-focused interactions.
Functionality Spotlight: Release 1 – ISIR Load
At its core, institutional student information record (ISIR) processing populates the new financial aid system with students’ academic and financial information. This will occur in October 2021, as part of Release 1, when ISIRs for the 2022-2023 financial aid year are available.
Where We’re Going
Our next major milestone for OSFP is Release 2, which will introduce the verification functionality. As schools are required to verify applications of students who are eligible to receive subsidized student financial assistance, OSFP supports the verification process. This phase is scheduled to begin in April 2020 with a planned launch in November 2021.
Alliance Virtual Conference 2021
Additionally, in 2020 we submitted a winning proposal to present at the Alliance Virtual Conference in March 2021. The topic will be “Rutgers Student Financial Planning – Innovative Approaches in a Complex Implementation”. The discussion will include how the OSFP implementation has presented several opportunities to innovate redesigning financial aid business processes across our four campuses and two distinct student information systems, and how we are leveraging Oracle SaaS and PaaS solutions.
Future Communication
Our next communication is a planned Spring 2021 newsletter, but we would be happy to hear from you! If you have any questions, concerns, or comments, please email us at seiiproject@finance.rutgers.edu.