Banner,
Past, Present and Future
Jack
Brinn
Interim
CIO
Presented
to ECU
Banner is one of several administrative
software solutions or ERPs (enterprise resource planning) used by public and
private institutions. Implementation of
an ERP is a major project for IT departments and users and is often a cultural
change across the enterprise.
Banner Past:
·
A previous
Provost approached the previous CIO over the need for a better administrative
software system in the student arena, particularly for better reporting
capabilities.
·
The GA was
considering a system-wide implementation of Banner at the time and invited ECU
to join their effort.
·
ECU did an
independent assessment by aligning our operational needs with the functionality
in Banner and came up with an 86% congruence (normal is in the 70s)
·
The funding was
established at $18.7 million and the project has remained under budget through
July 1, 2007.
·
Additional issues
–
o
The present legacy
software versions were not being updated.
o
The IBM mainframe
would be at end-of-life by the completion of Banner.
·
ECU decided to
install a comprehensive implementation of Banner, now the most complete of the
fourteen schools that have installed it, serving as the leader in areas such as
e-procurement and having a solid portal as the entry point.
o
NCSU was already
a PeopleSoft campus
o
UNC-CH is
implementing PeopleSoft to the tune of $80 million.
·
We made two
critical decisions early in the project:
o
Keep it “vanilla”
– no internal code changes to avoid a hodge-podge of custom-developed code that
is more difficult and expensive to maintain over time.
o
No access to
production data for security and performance reasons.
Banner Project Organization:
·
Project owner –
Mr. Kevin Seitz, VC for Administration & Finance
·
Project manager –
Don Sweet, Associate CIO. Coordinates
functional teams, manages budget, software contracts, consultants, programming
efforts, database conversions.
·
Issues Forum/Project
Oversight – Banner Executive Steering Committee chaired by CIO.
What is involved in the Banner project?
·
Hardware design
o
Banner runs in a
server environment, not a single box, mainframe paradigm.
o
With server-based
processing, high-speed storage area network (SAN) devices were implemented to
store production data.
·
Data
conversion/testing/validation from legacy databases to Oracle database engine
platform.
·
Hiring backfill
staff.
·
Team
coordination, training, business process changes and testing/validation by
functional groups, e.g., Financial Services, Admissions, Registrar, Graduate
Admissions, Student Financial Aid, etc.
·
Review by Banner
Executive Steering Committee.
·
Thousands of
hours.
Quote
from faculty member to Mr. Seitz: If I had to guess, you and your staff probably have had a pretty
stressful couple of weeks if not years but I would like to pay you a
compliment. You must be some sort of superman to have shepherded this
institution through one of the biggest changes in recent years. I am one
of those who is very happy that Banner has been implemented given what existed
previously. Thank you for all your hard work and perseverance and good
luck as the implementation moves forward.
Another View: Banner is a waste of $29 million. We should go back to the old system.
·
Any change of this magnitude will cause some disruption; managing that disruption through
communication, training and good project management is a key factor in our success.
o
ECU has not experienced the major problems that
occurred with PeopleSoft at NCSU and
o
Banner is a tightly-managed project.
·
Banner requires greater end-user involvement than the legacy
systems.
·
Banner requires process and workflow change.
·
Banner therefore requires training.
Banner Present - Project Status:
·
Finance (after a 7-month delay) and Student modules have
been implemented.
·
HR will be “turned on” October 16 after several delays.
§
Delays
were implemented when testing revealed issues or when the project status
reports revealed deadline issues.
§
Upon
resolution of the issues, implementation was resumed.
o
All HR data have been ported to Banner.
o
Both systems will run in parallel with dual entry taking
place through the cut-off date for the October 31 pay period.
o
October 31 pay checks will be processed by the legacy
system.
o
November 15 checks will come out of Banner.
o
There will be no delays, and
o
Graduate students will be paid.
o
There COULD be problems with student payrolls; however, that
will more likely be attributable to incorrect local procedures rather than to
Banner.
o
As a fall-back, the legacy system will be maintained until
the end of December.
o
There will be a triage system established for HR go-live and
emergency procedures are in the planning phase now – just in case.
The Mainframe (or MVS):
·
Unless there is a disaster (and we’ve not had one yet), the
mainframe will be turned off December 31.
·
The machine is at end-of-life and service contracts on the
hardware, operating system, backup systems, etc. are expiring. They can be resurrected but at a cost of
hundreds of thousands of dollars.
·
As a result of the power failures of June ’06 and the as yet
incomplete renovation of the power and air conditioning in the data center, we
cannot install any more servers in the building, and we have an urgent need to
do so. The presence of the mainframe
prohibits fulfillment of that need.
The Future of Banner:
·
Banner has been judged by UNC-W as a sound strategic
decision. They are implementing major
process change around Banner. Process
change is an expectation of President Bowles; as he told the legislature, “Your
University will operate more efficiently.”
It will happen at ECU, built in no small part around Banner.
·
Training will be on-going, just as with the legacy system.
·
The real beauty of Banner is the common Oracle database that
will provide major reporting improvements (business intelligence capabilities),
e.g., classroom utilization, and better data driven decisions at all levels.
·
Building that reporting infrastructure all the way out to
budget units through ecuBIC (BIC=business intelligence center) efforts is the
natural follow-on to the Banner implementation.
·
A new version of Banner will be installed in the Spring of
’08.