Technical Questions
Post-Implementation
| Technical Questions Archives |
| 1.) Q Approval time takes too long for PD documents (approximately 2 minutes). Is that going to get any better? |
| A Approval time will improve as a result of 4 performance releases of Procurement Desktop which will be made available during August and September. As these system improvements are made, the Customer Resource Center will notify Agency Implementation Leads, MARS Central will notify MARS Administrators and notification will be sent via regular Project Updates to Agency Communication Leads. |
| 2.) Q Leasing of the software is a concern. What happens if the contractor or the Commonwealth has problems? |
| A The software is not leased. The Commonwealth has purchased the software it will be using. Additionally, the Commonwealth is entering into a maintenance agreement with the MARS vendor, American Management Systems (AMS). The Commonwealth intends for MARS to provide long-term support for all accounting, budgeting, materials management and management reporting business needs. Because site specific modifications are being kept to a minimum, the Commonwealth will have the ability to continually upgrade the software to meet the changing needs of the Commonwealth. |
| 3.) Q Why do systems already existing need to be automated? |
| A MARS will provide tools that will allow the Commonwealth to replace its existing collection of redundant financial and materials management software applications. As a result, agencies will have better access to information and the Commonwealth will be able to cut costs associated with maintenance of duplicate systems. A single system will also provide a means for establishing more consistent business processes and procedures across the Commonwealth in order to get the best products, services and up-to-date information available at a reasonable cost. |
| 4.) Q Can different versions of ORACLE client reside on the same workstation? They have agency applications and are concerned with the MARS application using (or eventually using) different versions of ORACLE. |
| A Currently we have ORACLE 7.3 and 8.0.5 on a client pc and don't have any problems connecting to any of the databases supported (7.2 - 8.0.5). This should be transparent within ORACLE, but may not necessarily be true depending upon what the Procurement Desktop, BRASS, and Travel Management client applications are doing. We plan on installing multiple versions of ORACLE on some of the client pcs in the project team and verify that everything will work correctly. |
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