The Students First Initiative

FAQs

1. What is the Students First Initiative?
2. Why is it called Students First?
3. How is the Initiative designed?
4. What is ERP?
5. How will this benefit students, NPCC employees (faculty and staff), and the community?
6. How long should the entire process take?
7. How are we controlling costs?
8. Why have a POC - why are vendor demos not sufficient?
9. What is Blake's Blog?
10. What are Best Practices?

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What is the Students First Initiative?

The Students First Initiative’s goal is to review, select and implement a state-of-the-art ERP system; enabling the user community (NPCC faculty, staff and students) to readily process, report and store information.

Furthermore, it will provide NPCC with a single-source of information and functionality – supporting the full student lifecycle; from inquiry and admissions through alumni/community relations and giving; whilst supporting the institution’s financial, operational and human capital management (HR) requirements

Please click here to review our Initiative Charter.

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Why is it called Students First?

We asked everyone involved in the information-gathering phase to submit a name for the project. Of the names submitted, "Students First" seemed to have within it the inherent connotation of what we do here at the college -- after al, were it not for the students, we would not be here! Sally Carder (NPCC President) and the project team chose the name "Students First" for this reason.

How is the Initiative designed?

The Initiative consists of three (3) Phases:

• Phase One
  ~ Assessment, Investigation, Requirements Gathering and Application Selection
• Phase Two
  ~ Selected Application Implementation/Customization
• Phase Three
  ~ Go-Live and Sustainment of Selected Application

Please click here to access our Phase One Timelines

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What is ERP?

ERP is an acronym for Enterprise Resource Planning.

In the world of ERP, the Enterprise is the organization (the College in our case) and resources are typically defined as people, money and time. Each of these precious resources require careful and precise management.

Modern ERP applications (such as SAP, PeopleSoft, Banner, Datatel, Oracle, etc) are very much like Microsoft Office; which is a collection of stand-alone applications (such as Microsoft Word or Excel – you can purchase these applications by themselves and they will work just fine) which are brought together under one umbrella application (just as MS Office is the umbrella application for MS Word, Excel, Outlook, PowerPoint, etc). ERP applications are typically comprised of various modules, such as HR, Finance (including account receivables/payables), Purchasing, Warehousing, etc. They have the ability to generate reports from each of these modules or, a report may be generated from data from several modules (i.e., HR and Finance).

Therefore, each of these applications (now integrated into a single application may seamlessly share information – in addition, they typically use a common database. This is a plus because they share the same information (mitigating data replication and many commonly-found errors).

The Wikipedia definition of ERP: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enterprise_resource_planning

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How will this benefit students, NPCC employees (faculty and staff), and the community?

First of all, let us address the question: Why is this ERP project happening? The focus of this ERP project is to improve service and accessibility; provide better management tools; to provide more valuable accountability; and to replace outdated data processing systems. To do this most effectively we must:

• Support the "system" concept in which:
  • Campuses share resources
  • ERP accommodates a unified system rather than separate modules
  • Additional rich functionality supports cross campus activities.
  • Systems are continuously enhanced.
• Improve access to information
  • For all constituencies
  • In order to capitalize on desktop technology due to architecture of new system
• Replace current systems that have exceeded planned lives
  • Major fixes increase the potential for major breakdowns
  • Design of current systems was for a very different student, administrative and university system environment.

Benefits/Opportunities:

• Opportunities for Employees
  • Project is not a staff reduction effort
    • Employees will have many opportunities
  • Updated Skills
    • Employees will learn new methods of doing business
    • Employees will learn new software tools
    • Employees will acquire greater skills and work at a higher skill level
• Benefits for Staff
  • Staff able to work on higher priority activities rather than dealing with routine requests for information
  • Staff able to focus on exceptions or more difficult problems
  • Eliminate duplicate entries
    • Staff has ready access to information for performance of duties
• Benefits for Campus
  • Maximize ability of staff to cope with increasing demands
  • Competitive through demonstrated use of technology
  • Improved access to information and reporting capabilities
  • Additional functionality for better service and better compliance
• Benefits for students
  • Improved public service
  • More accessible information
  • Course lists and descriptions available through WWW
• Benefits for NPCC
  • Improved accountability and system-wide reporting
  • Will provide an advanced and innovative technology base on which to build for the future
  • Enable the College to remain an attractive employer.

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How long should the entire process take?

As we are just beginning this process, a definitive answer is difficult present. Many factors will influence the overall time of this initiative, such as:

• Level of active support from Executive Management
  (includes staff and faculty interaction/participation; casual interaction = more time
  -- only NPCC employees know how their jobs really need to be done)
• The selected application
  (some applications take longer to implement than others (some are more complex by nature, or may have fewer ‘wizards’ to assist)
• Number of consultants working on the project
  (fewer numbers = more work/person)
• Amount (or detail-level) of customization of the selected application
  (out-of-the-box implementations (with minimal customization) take less time)
• Delays due to budget constraints
  if funding is tight, this may mean fewer consultants working on the project.

However, here are some typical timelines:

• Phase One ~ Assessment, Investigation and Requirements Gathering:
  3-4 Months
• Phase Two ~ Implementation/Customization:
  6-18 Months
• Phase Three ~ Go-Live/Cut Over to the new System:
  3-6 Months

Please click here to access our Phase One Timelines

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How are we controlling costs?

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Why have a POC - why are vendor demos not sufficient?

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What is Blake's Blog?

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What are Best Practices?

Best Practices are (typically) organically developed from extensive reviews of methodologies and processes; of what works and what doesn’t, as well as what to avoid and what to ensure does occur.

The better consulting firms and user organizations examine their past engagements/implementations and derive a Lessons Learned approach (something found within the aerospace and aeronautical engineering fields).

Therefore, Best Practices tend to be generalizations which, if observed, will increase the chances of producing a positive result (typically using the 80/20 principal) while mitigating many of the negatives. It should be noted however, Best Practices should be employed as guides and not as a de facto methodologies to be followed slavishly.

Here is the Wikipedia discussion of Best Practices: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_practice