Thursday, April 4, 2013

Eight Consolidating, Collaborating, and Shared Services Projects as Discussed at Ellucian Live


It was an honor to be asked to participate in the 2013 Ellucian Live’s Executive Forum concurrent session on "The ROI of Consolidating ERPs and Services Across Multiple Campuses." Due to presentation time constraints, provided below are more detailed project descriptions and particulars for the 8 Tennessee Board of Regents (TBR) projects highlighted in the discussion. You can find the presentation slides at: http://slidesha.re/16uiKbk

ERP implementation (ERP): To better serve students, faculty, staff, and other constituents within the state, the TBR replaced its existing 3G administrative software with an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system in order to bring together processes, people and information. The new system, powered by Ellucian’s Banner® administrative system, offers a host of “self-service” online capabilities that had not been readily available before. This project stood apart from similar projects because of the TBR’s unique deployment approach. The multi-faceted approach included the combination of a Shared Rapid Implementation Methodology; a focus on development for the commonalities among its 19 institutions instead of differences; incorporating a third-party project oversight committee; and a creative “red/yellow/green” project reporting system. The result was a fast-tracked project that was completed on time that effectively controlled costs – with one time savings of $11-15 million. http://bit.ly/13Plapk

System Maintenance Office (SMO): The SMO was the logical result from the ERP implementation and was the TBR’s first major shared services project. Managed by and at the direction of the TBR, the SMO is a unique partnership with Ellucian that leverages both Ellucian and TBR employees to provide important services to all TBR institutions. These services include:
·         Provide system-wide tier 1 & 2 “Action Line” support for all Institutions
·         Developing and maintaining customizations/modifications
·         Supporting installation of software releases
·         Responding to institution-specific issues, such as software debugging/troubleshooting/testing
·         Supporting ongoing user functional and technical training
The SMO’s primary objective is to eliminate the duplication of software maintenance, support, and training efforts throughout the TBR’s 19 Institutions and results in $4.7-5.2M savings annually over the alternative of institutions individually providing the support. http://bit.ly/14RgXAW

DBA Collaborative (DBAC): In as similar fashion to the SMO, the DBAC is another shared services group that provides Oracle DBA support to the campuses. It differs from the SMO in that all of the core staff members are TBR employees that are collaborating with campus DBAs in support of everyone. Using this model, campuses do not have to staff as many DBAs or database technicians as they would perhaps have to but for the DBAC which results in savings of $1.8-2.8M annually. http://bit.ly/ZyuJQT

Business Intelligence (BI): Leveraging a consulting engagement at a TBR institution which identified 200+ key performance indicators (KPIs) eight TBR institutions began to collaborate on developing a KPI toolbox. This toolbox is for executives and management across TBR campuses to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of their particular area(s) of responsibility. This shared/collaborative approach will save $4-11M over individual/independent campus initiatives. http://bit.ly/MdWWtl

Banner Hosting (Hosting): Six institutions in the TBR collectively investigated hosting their Banner systems rather than operate them on their campuses. This resulted in a unique cloud collaboration with a 3rd party provider that leveraged virtualization and clustering technologies to provided real cost savings along with the benefits of Tier 3-4 hosting facilities. The original six institutions has now grown to nine and will share in cost savings of $2.3M annually over running the systems locally. http://slidesha.re/UGH2IN

E-Commerce (E-Comm): Lack of contract and supplier visibility, a want of procurement automation, the absence of data on cumulative purchases, and the repetition of the labor intensive processes of vendor registration and maintenance are just some of the many procurement challenges across a system as large as the TBR.  A combination of SciQuest products implemented system-wide provides a solution to these procurement challenges which also resulted in a 5 year cost benefit (ranging from $1.27 to $2.63 for each dollar invested.) http://slidesha.re/QxFHIL

Common Data Repository (CDR): The National Center for Higher Education Management Systems (NCHEMS) recommended to TBR the creation of a data warehouse to be used to enhance decision-making at both the system and campus levels. The strategy now referred to as the “Common Data Repository” (CDR) is to create a single authoritative data warehouse where data from TBR institutions are automatically fed into the CDR from their Banner administrative systems be they hosted or located at the campus. This single data warehouse strategy utilizes Oracle Golden Gate to transfer data to an Ellucian multi-entity processing (MEP) enabled operational data store (ODS)/enterprise data warehouse (EDW) to build the CDR and will result in annual savings of $3.4M+ over local ODS/EDW implementations.

Tennessee Summit (TN-Summit): The Tennessee Summit on Administrative Computing Technologies is an annual event that is open to higher education professionals in Tennessee and surrounding states who have adopted Banner from Ellucian. The TN-Summit was established to provide a forum for active examination of how administrative technology supports the institution, its students, faculty and staff and how this support can be improved. Its eleven thematic tracks: Accounts Receivable, Advancement, Business Intelligence, Finance, Financial Aid, Human Resources, Luminis, Student, Leadership and Management, Technical (DBA, Hardware, OS), and Technical (Application Programming) give TBR staff a conference experience while saving $572K+ annually in travel and higher registration fees. http://tnsummit.tbr.edu/

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