Author: Jacob Olson

FI$Cal: Beyond Fiscal Functionality

FI$Cal, or the Financial Information System for California, is far more than the state’s accounting, budgeting, and procurement system.  As a robust enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, FI$Cal has unique capabilities that departments are beginning to realize. We’ve previously highlighted our work implementing FI$Cal functionality…

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FI$Cal: A Non-IT Project?

The Financial Information System for California, known as FI$Cal, is setting records for state IT project expenditures. But from the perspective of departments transitioning to this new technology, it’s not an IT project in the traditional sense. For these departments, success depends upon their ability…

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Gardening for a Cause

A group from Highlands Consulting, along with families and friends, recently donated our time to the Sacramento Ronald McDonald House. We spent a few hours on a warm Saturday morning raking leaves, pulling weeds, and trimming trees and shrubs. The Ronald McDonald House provides a home-away-from-home…

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The Square Root of Change

Change can be difficult, and usually when an organization undergoes change things get worse before they get better. I recently heard this phenomenon described as the “square root of change” – and I think it’s something that project sponsors and project managers too often neglect.…

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We’ve Moved!

Highlands Consulting has outgrown our former office space on the 15th floor of the Wells Fargo Building in Downtown Sacramento. Our weekly all-staff meetings were getting crowded and our existing lease was ending, so we were pleased to find a new, larger office on the…

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Finding the Fun

Choose a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life, right?  Sometimes we get so busy or distracted that we forget to find the fun in what we do.  I’m going to use mowing the lawn (my favorite household chore) as…

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