04 User needs and pain points

Who are OPS users?

Users who will interact with OPS

• Division Directors
• Team Leaders
• Project Officers: both CORS and non-CORS/contractors
• Project team members
• Budget team members
• Procurement team members
• System administrators
• System owner

User needs

A starting list of user needs for OPS

• Manage user accounts and logins
• View a individualized user dashboard
• View budgets, projects and agreements across OPRE
• View budgets, projects and agreements at a portfolio-level
• View projects and agreements individually
• Manage CANs and funding
• Create new projects and agreements
• Edit projects and agreements
• Obtain and document necessary budget approvals
• Complete the procurement process
• Manage invoices
• Manage Vendor data
• Run reports
• Manage workforce planning
• Receive notifications and history of changes
• Communicate research updates to the OPRE website

User pain points

A few MAPS pain points OPS is intended to resolve

• The legacy system isn't intuitive
• The UI is confusing and cluttered
• View access is limited
• Edit access is limited
  • Staff need to email the budget team to update information on their behalf
• The procurement process/milestones aren't aligned with their process
  • It's difficult to track progress and collaboration with external parties
• The dashboards and tables don't provide what they need
• Users need to create workarounds via spreadsheets to get the data they need
  • There is no real-time view of the data
• Managing permissions is difficult
• It’s hard to know if the information in the system is up to date and when things were changed/why