What are the steps we will go through ?

Collegiate Project Services (CPS) will guide the University and the State Colleges through the following four steps.  Each of these steps will engage University stakeholders at all levels within the Nebraska system.

Step 1:  Decide on what features we want in a new Student System

The University of Nebraska and the Nebraska State Colleges will follow an established process to identify and prioritize features, or requirements, that each campus would like to have in a new student system.  First, teams of functional and technical leaders from all seven campuses will meet to identify the system features that will be required.  Second, members of the faculty and staff will log onto a customized web survey to rate the features that apply to them.  The resulting data will be tabulated to come up with a comprehensive and prioritized database of requirements.

In order to complete this process quickly and efficiently, the University of Nebraska and the Nebraska State Colleges will use the web tool DecisionDirector, which is an established toolset within higher education projects like NeSIS.  DecisionDirector contains thousands of detailed requirements that all campus  stakeholders will have an opportunity to rate (although no one person is expected to rate all of them!)  Inviting all faculty, staff, and select students across the seven campuses to participate will ensure a broad cross-section of stakeholder input into determining a final set of requirements for a new SIS system at Nebraska. 

These requirements will immediately be used in the resulting RFP for a new Student System solution.  This first step of the project will take place from November, 2007 thru January 2008.

Step 2: Prepare to issue an RFP

In this step of the process, which will be carried out at the same time as Step 1, Collegiate Project Services will coordinate the development of an RFP document, as well as all the ancillary materials and processes that will be needed to evaluate the various SIS vendor responses to the RFP.    

There are several tasks that must be carried out before releasing an RFP.  Obviously, a first task is to construct the RFP document that will be released in the market.  Putting this document together will require the coordinated work of the NeSIS Core team, the NeSIS Steering Team, procurement officials, and Collegiate Project Services.  As described elsewhere, the NeSIS Steering Committee and the NeSIS Core team are composed of leaders from all Nebraska institutions.      

A second important task during this period will be to develop the specific decision making criteria and the decision-making process that will be used in evaluating the various SIS vendor responses.  The NeSIS Steering Committee will be tasked to come up with these criteria, with the help of Collegiate Project Services.

Another significant task during this step will be to design “scripts” for critical SIS processes that we  would like the SIS vendors to demonstrate.  The purpose of these “scripted demonstrations” is to see how each of the SIS vendors’ products will handle business practices that are either critical, unusual, or are currently difficult to handle with the existing SIS system.   

Finally, during this step of the process it will be important to design structured telephone interview guides that will be used in checking reference accounts provided by the competing SIS vendors.  In addition, an online survey will be developed to complement the information we get from the “live” telephone interviews.   

All these tasks must be carried out during the November, 2007 – January, 2008 timeframe, prior to the release of the RFP in early February. 

Step 3: Go through the RFP process itself

If all goes well, the RFP for a new Student Information System will be released around the end of January or early February, 2008..  During the RFP response period, vendors will be permitted approximately six weeks to respond with written proposals and to provide detailed responses to each of the SIS requirements.  Once the RFP response period has closed, the NeSIS selection committee will go through two rounds of evaluations.

The first round of vendor evaluations will include how well the SIS vendors score on certain “pre-screening” criteria, and whether or not the vendors have an SIS product that meets the specifications (feature requirements) desired by the seven Nebraska institutions.    At this point only vendors who meet the stated qualifications will be invited to proceed to the next evaluation phase.

The second round of vendor evaluations will include vendor demonstrations and reference checking.  Representatives from all seven institutions will be invited to participate in attending and scoring vendor demonstrations (both “scripted” demos and “unscripted” demos).  At the same time functional and technical leaders will be asked to conduct phone interviews with vendor references.  The results of the interviews as well as the subsequent online questionnaires will be scored by participants. 

The NeSIS core team and the NeSIS Steering Committee will evaluate the data from both rounds of the evaluation to determine the best-fit vendor for our Nebraska institutions. Once this decision has been approved and vetted through the approval process, Nebraska University and the Nebraska State Colleges will enter into contract negotiations with the selected vendor.

This phase of the project will take place from January, 2008 thru April, 2008.  Once a decision is reached, approvals and contract negotiations may last thru August, 2008.

Step 4: Get ready to implement the new SIS system

The final step is for both the University of Nebraska and the Nebraska State Colleges to prepare for the implementation of the new SIS system.  In addition, Nebraska University has contracted for Collegiate Project Services to carry out an  assessment of the “readiness” of the Nebraska University System to work together and carry out the implementation of a new SIS.  As part of this process, Collegiate Project Services will assess the  strengths and weaknesses of the Nebraska system on sixteen factors known to predict success in an implementation of this sort.

During this phase of the project Collegiate Project Services consultants will visit each campus. They will conduct interviews, carry out focus group sessions, and administer online questionnaires to technical staff, functional staff, department heads, academics, executives, and students.  The outcome of these activities will be a written report, which will outline how “ready” Nebraska is to take on this multi-year, multi-million dollar project.  The report will identify those areas that represent “gaps” in preparedness, and will suggest action steps that should be taken to close those gaps.

The readiness assessment exercise will allow the Nebraska University system of schools to better prepare for this mammoth project, and will increase the likelihood of successfully implementing a new SIS at all four campuses. 

This step of the process will take place in the spring of 2008.

 

If you would like to learn more about ERPs and ERP implementations visit the Collegiate Project Services' library