SIS Project Structure: Overview

In September 2004, Provost Oblinger charged an Implementation Planning Taskforce (IPT) to assess the student information system needs of North Carolina State University, develop a plan to implement Oracle's Campus Solutions (CS) system, and respond to the following points:

Deliver an implementation strategy
Establish a timeline for the project including milestones
Provide estimates of the resource requirements and points of investment
Define a campus structure for the project that ensures appropriate participation by campus stakeholders
Develop a communication plan for the project

System Assessment

The foundation of NC State's legacy student information system utilizes programming languages and tools that are not widely used today. As a result, this system lacks the flexibility required to respond to changing business and academic requirements. The core of this SIS is self-developed and does not take advantage of industry standards or provide economies of scale associated with vendor-supported software. Efforts to keep this system current with the expectations of the campus community and changes in technology have resulted in a fragmented system that is difficult to support and limits the University's ability to respond to new demands.

Taskforce Recommendations

The Implementation Planning Taskforce's vision is that of an integrated, sustainable student information system that will provide real-time, self-service, anytime, anywhere access for students, faculty, and staff. This type of technology-enabled environment will support NC State's image as a 21st century university and better prepare the institution to meet the increasingly competitive demands of higher education. This vision is consistent with what Oracle CS offers.

NC State purchased Oracle's Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) solution for Higher Education in 1998. While the University maintained an annual maintenance contract on CS since the time of its purchase, its implementation was postponed while the product matured and the campus evolved an infrastructure capable of supporting this ERP platform. The emergence of Oracle CS as an industry leader coupled with a recent reorganization within the Resource Management Information Systems unit of the Division of Finance and Business has created an opportunity to proceed with the CS implementation.

The university's current reliance upon a dated system and key support personnel nearing retirement age poses a significant risk to business operations as identified in the Business Continuity Planning process. Additionally, the fragmented nature of the current SIS environment jeopardizes the integrity of the University's data and increases the risk that critical systems may not be in compliance with auditing and disaster recovery standards. Based on information obtained from other universities that have implemented Oracle CS, the state of our current SIS, as well as feedback from a variety of consulting groups experienced with CS implementations, the IPT recommends that NC State proceed with the implementation of Oracle CS as a replacement for the current SIS in accordance with the strategy and schedule set forth in this report.

Implementation Strategy

It is recommended that the Oracle CS modules be implemented in the following sequence:

Admissions (includes Undergraduate, Graduate, Veterinary, and Lifelong)
Financial Aid
Records (includes Registration, Permanent Records, Scheduling, and Course Catalog)
Student Financials
Academic Advising

Project Timeline

The implementation should require twenty-four months to complete and would need to begin in the summer of 2005 for a target completion date of fall 2007. Given this target date, the Fall 2007 cohort would conduct their academic career - from admission through graduation- entirely within the new CS system.

Campus Structure

The project requires strong executive sponsorship in the form of the Chancellor, Provost and Vice Chancellor for Finance and Business. The existing governance structure of the other campus ERP applications should be replicated. This includes a Management Team, composed of senior campus administrators that would have fiduciary and scope responsibility for the project, and a Steering Team, composed of senior administrators representing the functional units impacted by the conversion. A Project Manager would manage the project timeline and the Implementation Teams for each module. To insure appropriate campus representation, each Implementation Team would be composed of a Functional Lead, an outside consultant expert in the specific Oracle CS module, campus technical specialists, and subject matter experts representing various campus constituencies.

Communication Plan

Project communication will be wide ranging in type, target audience and frequency. Components of the communication plan will include a continuously updated project website, open forums to provide campus an opportunity to interface with project participants, small focus groups to address conversion details, as well as updates to the project teams.

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