The Financial Information System provides an efficient way of managing the financial resources of Indiana University. The FIS is comprised of two main components: the Transaction Processing Environment and the Decision Support Environment.

Transaction Processing Environment

The Transaction Processing Environment is an "electronic forms" environment which replaces the financial paper processes. The system is designed to eliminate the need to handle paper documents and keep duplicate copies of information. The TP environment takes advantage of the workstations on faculty and staff desks. It utilizes the processing power of the workstation to make the process simpler and more consistent with other applications in use.

One of the primary features of the TP system is the concept of pre-established routing. When a document is created, the system routes the document to the proper people based on tables established by the organization and account managers.

Decision Support Environment

The Decision Support Environment is a collection of services that provide access to the information within the Financial Information System. These include not only reporting, but also data extraction, post-processing, analysis, display and printing.

Decision Support tools enable the user to:

• produce standard reports on a scheduled basis
• run pre-defined queries on an ad hoc basis
• access and extract appropriate detail information
• access pre-defined "views" of the data
• access pre-defined extracts or summaries of data (standard collections)
• drill down through levels of detail
• transfer the data to local resources (LAN or Desktop)
• integrate such data using workstation-based reporting and analysis tools