Ciber Makes the Grade

Those are only a few of the user-friendly services to be delivered by Ciber Enterprise Solutions, a division of Ciber Inc., which ranked No. 87 on this year's VARBusiness 500. The solution provider is replacing the mainframe-based student-information system at the school,home of the Razorbacks,with a solution based on PeopleSoft Student Administration Solutions software, running on Unix hardware.

Once the new system is operable at the Fayetteville, Ark.-based university, students, faculty and alumni with security privileges will have Internet access to student accounts, class registration and financial aid. It will allow users to view course descriptions, grades and transcripts online, as well as provide access to bills and financial-aid payments, according to the university. It will also report required data to federal and state agencies.

The institution's existing mainframe system features some Java-based Web-enablement that lets users perform numerous functions, such as viewing grades. But the new setup should be more accessible to the school's 16,000 students and 3,000 faculty, says Randy Apon, director of Integrated Student Information Systems and vice chancellor for enrollment management at the university.

"We have a current system that I would suggest is fairly good," Apon says. "[But it's mainframe-based and, therefore, has no GUI base to it at all. Some members of our computing-services staff have created a number of Web enablements to our current legacy system. A broader group of users is going to find it easier to interact with the PeopleSoft Internet-based system."

Greenwood Village, Colo.-based Ciber partnered with PeopleSoft to pursue the account, says Tom Payne, senior client development executive at the solution integrator. Ciber and PeopleSoft held preliminary meetings in March 2000, designed to build rapport and discover the university's needs, Payne says. Last summer, the university released an RFP for implementation of software and services, he recalls. The university also met existing Ciber and PeopleSoft clients and visited the solution provider's site. Three companies then made software demonstrations during the course of three days.

"From what we witnessed, [ours was really a complete solution relative to the other options they were considering," Payne says. "This isn't just a software purchase,it's also an implementation strategy."

It was the totality of Ciber and PeopleSoft's combined proposal that clinched the deal, which totals $11.1 million over five years. It includes the PeopleSoft programs, implementation, supporting software, hardware and salaries, among other expenses.

"One of the things that made a difference, and tipped the balance for PeopleSoft, was Ciber," Apon says. "PeopleSoft and Ciber were involved in the process from the start. A number of people on our campus were impressed with the details Ciber gave of how it would implement the system. We got more specificity from Ciber about where we would go."

The University of Arkansas was able to tap the expertise both Ciber and PeopleSoft have in higher education, Payne says. PeopleSoft's program includes embedded best practices that were developed in consultation with several universities, he notes.

"In the vast majority of cases, the information universities are looking for is embedded into these best practices," Payne says. "In some cases, business processes need to be reengineered. In [other cases, the software needs to be reengineered. It's our job to help identify where these merge."

Currently, the implementation remains in the planning stage. That includes developing ground rules for the implementation, a vision and ways to mitigate risk. Ciber will then put all this data down on paper, including a fit/gap analysis. The analysis will measure how the legacy and PeopleSoft systems are similar and dissimilar and address how to bridge any gaps, Payne says. Ciber's next step is to put together a detailed project plan or road map for implementation, featuring information on who and what will be involved, as well as milestones that will let Ciber and the university track the solution's progress, he says.

Next August, the university plans to roll out the first phase of the live system in its admissions office, Apon says. Records/registration, financial aid and student accounts will follow, he adds. And although the institution initially will use its existing Sun Microsystems Unix hardware, it plans to issue an RFP for new hardware next spring, according to Apon.

So, while its students hit the books, university administrators, in partnership with Ciber and PeopleSoft executives, are hitting the ground running this fall to ensure easy accessibility to information for both students and faculty. n

Alison Diana ([email protected]) is a freelance technology and business writer based in Merritt Island, Fla.