Selection and Implementation of 3rd Party Application Systems
The goal of the App Team is to enable university staff and students through the use of large scale computer application systems. For several years Banner has been the campus wide Enterprise Resource Planning system (ERP) that is used for nearly all business processes at SPU. The use of an ERP system provides us with the enormous benefit of having all university data synchronized in one unified system making it easier to access information and support the infrastructure. While this is a tremendous benefit to the organization, its cost is limited extensibility and customization that often gives rise to the demand for 3rd party applications to better serve specific business needs.
Often times 3rd Party systems are necessary for business operations; the App Team currently supports nearly a dozen such systems. However the selection and implementation of these applications is a critically important task and many questions must be answered for before the purchase of any new system:
- Can the business need be solved within our current ERP (Banner)?
- How will the new system integrate into existing infrastructure?
- Do we already have a system that satisfies this need and don't know about it?
- Will new hardware need to be purchased and what are the initial and maintenance costs?
- What effect, if any, will the application have on other departments or staff?
- What is the annual cost of the system including estimated FTE cost in support and training?
- Is there available FTE to support the new application or will new FTE be required?
- How does adding the support of this new system affect available support for existing systems?
- How will this system share data with other systems such as Banner?
These questions and more must be addressed in the feasibility analysis of any new system and many of these can only be answered by CIS. The Central Systems Team will need to be consulted on any hardware purchases and in discussions about data storage and backup. The App Team will need to be involved in any discussion about application support, maintenance, and integration. CIS's involvement in the decision making process for any new software system purchase is critical to the success of the project.