SUMMA Hypercare and the SUMMA War Room - “Have you tried turning it off and on again?”

In early January 2025, just as most people were returning from the holidays, DGs were already diving into 2025 budget operations on fresh credits - in a completely new environment. SUMMA was live, but the 2024 financial data was still en route, due to be migrated in February. This meant working without the full picture - navigating open commitments, initiating new transactions, and adapting workflows on the fly. 

Some DGs had prepared in advance, making maximum use of the end-of-year 2024 to process invoices in advance, rather than waiting until February. Others had to catch up quickly. Add to this the need to keep treasury operations – from salaries and pensions to major early-year payments and it became clear: this wasn’t just a system launch. It was a stress test of the Commission’s financial resilience. 

The response? Rapid, collective, and highly coordinated. 

At the heart of the effort was a support structure built for scale. The Local SUMMA Coordinator / Champions group – staff embedded in all DGs – had received intensive SUMMA Boot Camp training. Their role: to provide first-line support, translate technical issues into plain language, and keep anxiety low and motivation high.

At the same time, the SUMMA War Room, set up by the USM sector, became the heartbeat of post-go-live operations. This live support hub was where issues were raised, dissected, and resolved in real time. The vibe? Less like a helpdesk and more like a digital command centre. Champions posted error messages. Colleagues jumped in with workarounds. Screenshots flew. Patterns emerged. And every solved case became part of a growing knowledge base – thanks to Pacioli, our AI assistant, who silently supported by becoming the virtual speaking manuals.

February saw the peak of user support, with over 200 tickets per day - a reflection of the system’s real-world stress test. But the learning curve was fast. Within weeks, the volume dropped significantly, stabilising at around 100 tickets per day. And the nature of the questions shifted: from basic “how-to” questions to deep functional queries, strategic use cases, and change requests aimed at improving the platform itself. This marks a major shift: users aren’t just adapting - they’re actively shaping the system. 

And let’s be clear: SUMMA is not and will not be ABAC 2.0. The move away from legacy systems was deliberate. SUMMA is designed to be cloud-enabled, analytics-driven, and AI-compatible - not just to boost performance, but to ensure cybersecurity, scalability, and future-readiness. Legacy code can’t do that. But SUMMA can - and will continue to evolve. 

Case in point: Release 16, packed with improvements and user feedback, was deployed at the end of April.

Training hasn’t stopped either. While the initial rollout phase focused on structured onboarding, we've now moved to more flexible, user-driven formats – such as regular Q&A sessions on Friday, where users can get live answers, share use cases, and help build collective intelligence. All this feeds into a wider knowledge management effort to empower users and reduce reliance on ticket-based support. The result? A user community that’s growing not just in confidence, but in capability.

SUMMA Hypercare was never just about fixing issues - it was about creating a culture of support, learning, and continuous improvement. And it has worked. The messages of thanks, the spirit of collaboration across the DGs, and the way people pulled together – even under pressure - tell the real story. 

We’re not just changing systems. We’re transforming the way we work together. SUMMA is the future of financial management - and the whole Commission is helping to build it, one release at a time.