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ERP: More Than System Functionality
8/13/2008
Although it is commonly understood that the implementation of an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system will take tremendous resources, time, and money, few IT leaders fully realize -- and plan for -- its impact and the potential opportunities it brings to their institutions.At Missouri State University, we have a strong culture of strategic planning. Back in January 2007, as we began our 30-month process to implement the full suite of Banner administrative modules (Student, Financial Aid, Finance, HR/Payroll, and Advancement) and the complementary Workflow, Document Management, Electronic Data Warehouse (EDW), and Luminis integration platform, we believed we were well positioned for success. We had secured approval for funding and had strong support at the executive level. A Core Management Team (CMT) of twelve mid-level leaders was assembled to execute the plan, and the CMT worked with our IT Council on communication efforts to ensure the entire campus community was informed and could actively participate in the project. We are on schedule to successfully replace our core business application software by July 2009.
As we entered the final phase of our planning process, we realized that Banner would be an important component of our Enterprise Architecture (EA), but not the only one. To effectively build Missouri State's Unified Digital Campus (UDC) we needed to consider all of our technologies, people, and processes. We needed to rethink how our various software applications, policies, data standards, and overall architecture needed to change to support and integrate with the new Banner administrative system. We realized that we needed to think beyond just "implementing an ERP."
As part of our planning process, we spent considerable time visiting and researching numerous institutions to identify risks and benefits associated with other ERP implementations. It became clear to us that most institutions underestimate the financial and human resources needed for an implementation of this scale. More importantly, we found that most institutions fail to realize the potential opportunities created by the implementation process.
As part of our effort to maximize the benefits of our implementation and avoid some of the issues that arose at other institutions, Missouri State University engaged with SunGard Higher Education for a UDC Strategy & Assessment Service. The core of this service is the Enterprise Architecture methodology, which relates business activities, strategies, and priorities directly to the required IT infrastructure. Equally important, we have discovered unexpected benefits; unity of the campus community through strategic planning activities, clarifying and simplifying policies and processes, centralization of data and decentralization of access to that data, and professional development of middle level project managers who will undoubtedly become our future generation of leaders.
A key component of the Strategy and Assessment Service was the creation of a "roadmap" aligned to our institution's five-year plan.
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