DASH

What is the University of Tennessee’s DASH Program?

After two decades of service, the University of Tennessee’s Systems Applications and Products platform—known throughout the university as IRIS—will no longer be supported. Given the central role that IRIS plays in processing all of UT’s financial and human resources activities, UT officials began planning in 2019 for the transition to a new, cloud-based enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, known as DASH (Dynamic Administrative Systems for Higher Ed). We are working toward a systemwide go live of finance, human resources, and payroll, with a limited deployment of facilities maintenance to two campuses in January of 2025.

What are we doing now?

UT’s new enterprise resource planning (ERP), requires more than technical preparation—it’s a collective leap forward in how UT operates and will require ensuring everyone using the system is ready and able to embrace the new technology. UT will begin the DASH transition in January 2025.

While UT would be technically ready for the DASH transition on the initial go-live date of July 1, the DASH executive team determined that an extension would ensure the University is organizationally ready to adopt the change and will yield dividends with long-term success for the transition.

Change impacts are helping inform our change management strategies, including communications and training, as we prepare for this transition. View the “Timeline” page to gain more insight on the phases of the implementation.

Project in Review

• UT and Accenture partnered in reviewing 24 process and 159 sub-process areas in finance, human resources and payroll for our Business Process Reimagination. About 300 employees systemwide participated in reviewing and reimagining current and future work processes.
• Accenture was selected through a publicly competitive process as the system integration partner for the DASH ERP implementation project.
• The initial Chart of Accounts engagement included defining the structure of the financial chart of accounts, serving as an accelerator as the Project enters the design/blueprint phase for financial workstreams. The final set of actual values will not be solidified for some time, as segments and values may continue to be refined during the design phase.
• The Design/Blueprint phase was completed in February 2023, as process, technical, and other non-functional requirements and design were identified to confirm the scope of the project.
• The Adopt and Adapt phase was completed in August 2023, as over 500 project team members from across the state participated in more than 100 prototype sessions to vet UT business processes in the University’s own Oracle environment. Valuable feedback and insight were being captured throughout this phase to refine the solution and confirm the design of DASH.
• The Validate phase consists of rigorous testing to ensure functional and technical requirements are met and to ensure the system is working as designed, performing multiple rounds of mock data conversions and cleansing to yield high-quality data.
• DASH will launch in January 2025, and will improve our users’ experiences and allow us to be more agile and dynamic in our finance, human resource and payroll functions.

Thank you, Governor Lee and Legislators

The Tennessee General Assembly passed a historic budget in April 2021. Among other items, it allocated $50 million nonrecurring for UT System and $120 million nonrecurring for other public universities to assist with implementing a new enterprise resource planning (ERP) solution. Thank you to our legislators and Governor Bill Lee for making this important investment in public universities across our state. This key investment will transform the way we do business. Click the “Benefits” URL on the left to view the anticipated benefits and why UT is proceeding with this change.