Program Management Office

In a constantly changing environment, the VPF’s program management office (PMOVPF) responds to the challenges of transforming the finance function within EPFL and contributes to its improvement, while ensuring that it meets the School’s strategic and operational development. It supports projects that aim to simplify and modernize existing processes, with a vision to continuously optimizing the work of EPFL employees.

Olivier Colomb

Our mission is to translate EPFL's strategic vision into concrete transformation projects. We carry them out within the shortest possible time, with adequate human and operational resources, by ensuring the support and participation of actors with different or even divergent needs

Olivier Colomb, program management officer.

Users are put at the centre

The PMOVPF’s motto is to place EPFL employees at the heart of its activity to best meet their expectations. All the projects it oversees, whether it is new processes or new tools, come from needs that have been expressed within the School.

A transversal approach

Crosscutting, the projects led by the PMOVPF do not only concern the Vice Presidency for Finances. The VPFI works closely with the other Vice Presidencies, such as the Vice Presidency for Operations. Part of the PMOVPF’s activity also includes working with external experts, who provide assistance to carry out the projects undertaken.

Few examples of projects

A new tool to manage travel and expense reimbursements in a simplified and digitalized way has been deployed in 2019.

Main benefits:

  • Electronic approval of the travel request (no need for signature).
  • Scanning of supporting documents via smartphone.
  • Automatic uploading of expenses into the tool.

The “Invoice Dematerialization Project” aims to reduce invoice-processing time. It is a matter of moving from a largely paper-based process to a digital process, where invoices will be received centrally via different channels (e-Invoice, PDF invoice by email, paper invoice); and made available on the Sesame portal so that units can allocate and validate them.

Main benefits:

  • No need to send an invoice by internal mail to the accounting department.
  • Centralized scanned paper invoices (no need to scan and archive supplier invoices).
  • Avoid input errors, which can occur when imputation elements are handwritten.
  • Possibility to validate an invoice even if you are on business trip.

We are open to your comments and suggestions

If you have any questions, comments or suggestions on how we can serve you better, please contact us at [email protected] or drop by our office.