Headlines

The ODIN in the Tank
ICON Takes the Throne

Heidi Anderson

After three years of blood, sweat and tears, on Monday, April 24, 2006, Student Fiscal Services went live with a new imaging system.

The new system replaces ODIN (Open Document Image Network) that was on the very last of its nine lives and Computing and Communications could no longer dedicate resources to fix all of ODIN’s ailments. While ODIN was revolutionary at its inception in 1995, it had become extremely slow and cumbersome to use.

ODIN was developed to take student documents (prom notes, deferments, signature verifications, etc) and image them on the network for retrieval. This allowed SFS to dispose of paper files it kept on each and every student loan borrower. ODIN contained about 500,000 documents that also had to be converted to the new system. ODIN also contained thousands and thousands of corrupted documents that had to be cleaned up prior to conversion. The need for a new system was clear!

Launched in three separate phases, the shared system started with Accounts Payable. They created their system from scratch. Their system is more automated as they handle thousands of documents daily. Phase two was to create a test system that SFS could play with and explore. This test period lasted about a week and we were able to visualize how our system would work together with AP. Finally, phase 3 included the Student Fiscal Services ODIN conversion and implementation. The shared system is capable of handling hundreds of thousands of documents together and keeps costs low as we also share a server and some user licenses.

Several people worked on this project including Michael Lanham, Pam Luther, and Jeff Petersen from SFS and Bill Swann, Lisa Jones, and Alexis Raphel from C&C.

Aptly named ICON (Image Collection & Organization Network) after a naming contest which included such submissions such as THOR (to replace ODIN) and
Jaeson Albritton of the accounting unit at Student Fiscal Services won the naming contest for his submission of ICON, and a $10.00 University Bookstore gift card.

We are proud of our new system in SFS. Come on by and we’d be happy to demonstrate! We are excited for the possibilities that this new system brings to all of Financial Management.