Purchasing and Implementing a Student Management System at Jefferson County School System

September 28, 2014
MGMT 408

Introduction

The Jefferson County School System (JCSS) is a large community school system that supports middle schools, high schools and elementary schools. The schools are located in different cities with different types of facilities and staff. The school superintendent retired three years ago and his was replacement Dr. Green. The school has undergone various changes during this time, some pros and some cons. I will be identifying the situation which impacted the school’s overall software system and how it caused a large impact on its education system. JCSS has selected three different vendors for its new software system and eventually gave the contract to DSIC, but there are still some concerns.
Background

JCSS school functioning is going on properly and all the things are in place. There is a team of 2 members under David Meyer, who manages the software for the schools and they communicate with the staff to make the new changes work for the system. Every time when new requirement comes in the guys are contacted and they are directly being communicated the new requirement. After studying the requirement, the software team works on the changes and performs several activities to change and test the work they have done for the other teams. Since the old superintendent retired, Dr. Green has a new approach on the system. He says that the software systems today are not implemented in-house and these systems must be developed and purchased from outside, as these systems today behave as commodity in the market. So, instead of working with the in-house development of software he put out a market proposal and invited different vendors to provide a proposal and quotation for the new system they are thinking to implement in their education system. There were several companies approached for this course of action. After contacting three different schools already using one of these company’s systems, JSCC selected three vendors. They approached schools and get their reviews and studied the system over there and after doing several weeks of study, they chose to go with DSI, as it’s been ranked first in such systems and providing many other facilities with the software support system. DSI agreed on the system and decided to make the proper changes and started working on the system. They also laid down the approach to provide the training to different officers present in the school to let them work on the system. After doing the modifications and changes, DSI was given the date in the summer (when school is off) to start with the integration of their new system. They started running the schedules to transfer data from the old system but things are not going into right direction and schedules were getting rocky. DSI explained that the officer is responsible for this and there are not issues into the ERP system they have provided. They were given another chance and with the help of Paul Faris, they were able to run the schedule successfully, but they are still pushing deadlines close to school opening back up. If school opens up and things aren’t squared away there will be a huge queue of students outside each department for fees payment, student registration, scheduling, grades/transcripts, etc.
Discussion

For developing the ERP system there must be some software architecture. Delivery and methodologies should be followed such as agile development, waterfall or any other. it will be great big no decision which Dr Green has taken for the school staff, if such a decision to be made and a new ERP system should needs to be installed, then it must not be done in such a hurry, and it must be given proper time, such a task involves large effort and proper schedule must be maintained, Moving from one system to another can be a frustrating ordeal, which JCSS is suffering. The following points must be taken into account before transitioning the old system to the new ERP implementation: 1. Parallel implementation should be done with the old and new system in place. 2. Implementing new tasks and rolling out the changes should be done incrementally instead of on the fly. 3. There must be some dedicated staff to deal with DSIC to aid with overall performance. 4. Training and materials must be preplanned and communicated well in advance. 5. All the systems should be in place from time to time, so that the students won’t be affected from new system changes. 6. "Many of my best clients are 'sold' by the [vendor's] marketing team; however once the implementation is complete they are surprised by system functionality restrictions, lack of capabilities, and the impact on existing internal best practices," says Shawn Casemore, president, Casemore & Co., which helps clients improve their operational performance. His advice: Always ask for references. Request the names of at least three companies "who are in your business sector, who you can contact and discuss the software with, then call and discuss features, functionality, and challenges," he says. If the vendor can't (or won't) provide at least three names? "Walk away," unless you want to be a guinea pig. [Jennifer Lonoff Schiff] System performance must be evaluated and compared with the old system. According to the school staff the old system functions very well; much more efficient and effective than the new one. They are not happy with the new system as there is a very bad impact of implementing this system into the school and it relatively fails for all departments and for all the school locations.
Conclusion
After analyzing the complete system, I believe the immediate decision to transition to the ERP solutions implementation will hurt the overall school system. As shown above, we should keep using the old system until the new one is fully developed and in place with all the features currently present in the old system. Steps must be taken with proper help of the data processing director who has already worked on their system. Instead of eliminating them, they must be provided with new opportunity to implement such a system on time.
References
By Jennifer Lonoff Schiff Tue, March 27, 2012, 13 Common ERP Mistakes and How to Avoid Making Them