The Students First Initiative

(formerly referred to as the NPCC Enterprise Application Integration Initiative)

Welcome to the Students First Initiative site!

This page explains why this site was created and provides you with a project briefing: including project justification, goals, objectives and scope.

Why this Site?
Project Justification
Project Primary Goals & Objectives
Project Scope
Project Phases & Stages

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Why this Site?

This site is used to share information across the NPCC Students First Initiative team and throughout the larger College community ~ reflecting the input of individuals across NPCC's various departments.

Included on the site are a calendar of major meetings, key milestones, past communications; such as project status reports, meeting minutes and presentations, important emails, the project charter, project plan, action items and project team contacts.

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Project Justification

The College, leveraging Public monies, will employ Best Practices to ensure Due Diligence is applied toward the acquisition of a modern, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) application; one which will provide NPCC students and faculty the flexibility to easily and effectively process (and access) critical data. This includes the ability for meaningful reporting, data extraction, data analysis, score cards, dashboards and user kiosks; whilst greatly improving the presentation and dissemination of this critical information.

In support of this initiative, NPCC will be implementing a new underlying technology infrastructure (hardware and software), which will include identity management, security, privacy, regulatory compliance and risk management solutions. In addition, data conversion and migration from the existing legacy platform and applications will be undertaken as well.

Leveraging Best Practices, throughout the initiative; NPCC and its consultants will employ a business process approach; one which properly identifies and documents current business and information needs. Furthermore, these processes will provide a library for obtaining a common understanding of college-wide processes and requirements as well as provide a framework for comparisons and prioritization.

This disciplined phased-approach will leverage the combined experience of NPCC staff and its consultants. The project will have joint oversight by the NPCC IT Director of Computer Services and the designated ERP Practice Director; both supported by the contractor's project management office (PMO). Functional-level quality control will be validated by using key stakeholders; these NPCC professionals will be involved in the planning, implementation and testing of the nascent ERP system.

Once implemented, this state-of-the-art ERP system will enable 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.

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Project Primary Goals & Objectives

The primary goals and objectives of the Students First Initiative are to:

  • select, validate and implement a leading vendor's ERP product; one which will meet the College's current and future information processing and data analysis needs;
  • manage the change to fully support the current needs of the College's users with minimal impact to users;
  • ensure that the selected tool will support potential (future) data marts and data warehouses ~ as they are incorporated into future projects.
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Project Scope

  • investigate, validate and if required, implement the replacement of NPCC's existing ERP application with a newer, graphical user interfaced (GUI) ERP application;
  • link data from NPCC's multiple databases within the new ERP application to allow the consolidation and presentation of critical information
  • use a single sign-on so a user (student, faculty or staff) may sign onto the NPCC network only once and can go directly into the new application (without needing an additional sign-on).
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Project Phases & Stages

This project is using a phased implementation approach in order to learn from each phase before starting the next one. This also allows an easier transition for our user community.

Phase I: This Phase is dedicated to investigation/assessment and requirements gathering. Select department heads and 'Super Users' are queried regarding the requirements of their discrete departments. The final portion of this Phase culminates with an on-site Proof of Concept (POC) ~ one in which two (or more) ERP vendors are invited to participate. The results of the POC lead directly to a recommendation for purchase from one of the selected vendors.

Phase II: This Phase consists of the purchase, installation, implementation and customization of the selected ERP application within the College's IT environment. This shall consist of hardware, software; as well as the employment of various , associated Best Practices (i.e., Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery plans (BCP/DRP)).

Phase III: This Phase consists of 'go live' and application sustainment. Typically, the legacy application is 'phased-out' over a period of time (meaning once the 'go live' date is reached, the legacy application and the new ERP application are run in parallel. The purpose of this approach is to ensure the new application is ready to assume its designed responsibilities. Once senior management (IT and functional personnel) are confident in the new application's capabilities, the legacy application is gradually 'switched off.'

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