Among the Department of FISCal’s (FI$Cal) top priorities, is ensuring our end users can rely on the FI$Cal system to work for them. We strive to provide the highest level of customer service through several different avenues. As part of our commitment to continuous improvement, we partner with the Customer Impact Committee (CIC) to get formal feedback on the challenges, questions, ideas, solutions, and input identified by the CIC’s members.

The CIC is a formal way for agencies and state entities to provide their feedback, and to express their views and concerns to the FI$Cal team and the FI$Cal Steering Committee. The CIC meets every other month, and is chaired by Jody Lusby, Director of Administrative Services at the California Department of Food and Agriculture. The CIC Chair participates in the FI$Cal Steering Committee to represent agencies’ and state entities’ needs during the entire life cycle of the FI$Cal system, including system operation and maintenance.

As a result of the conversations uplifted during the regular CIC meetings, in 2019, the CIC decided to create a regular “lessons learned and best practices” forum, where end users and departments can share lessons they’ve learned and efficiencies they’ve identified throughout FI$Cal implementation, as well as struggles they may be facing or ideas they’d like to share. “These sessions give FI$Cal an opportunity to hear some of the challenges the departments are facing, and they’ve been very helpful with reaching out directly to those departments to help resolve those issues.” said Lusby. Among the goals of the lessons learned and best practices forums is an opportunity for departments to create a community to improve their outcomes, “these sessions have definitely helped departments network with each other” said Lusby.

As a result of this forum, the CIC is actively receiving assistance from FI$Cal staff, and also coming up with solutions for cross-departmental challenges, such as developing a process to streamline updates to purchase order buyers, an issue that came up in a recent forum. “We have a meeting scheduled with FI$Cal’s robotic process automation team and about 12-15 departments to see what type of solution we can come up with.” said Lusby. It’s this community approach to problem solving that FI$Cal encourages, in order to make the financial system easier to use and to increase compliance among departments.

All departments using the system are encouraged to participate in these sessions and share their unique experiences. FI$Cal’s hope is that the more participants the forums have, the more cross-department sharing can be done, thus improving the experience for our end users.

There have been four lessons learned and best practices forums so far: June and September of 2021, and January and April of 2022. The next session is scheduled for July 6, 2022.

More information about the CIC can be found on the Customer Impact Committee page on the FI$Cal website.