Whilst large companies and manufacturers have long used enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions to manage resources and control budgets; it is only over the past few years that Colleges and Universities have started to embrace enterprise wide business applications.
Higher education may well be one of the final frontiers for ERP applications, and with good reason.
In higher education, as it is with most other verticals, competition is tightening even as budgets are shrinking. ERP provides insights into how these institutions can better allocate budgets to ensure that they are performing in ways that outpace expectations.
A few of the ways in which ERP will be essential in this area are:
- Insight into how and when to expand educational offerings, including adding to curriculum and expanding e-learning capabilities;
- Resource management capabilities, including budgets, staff, and faculty;
- Improved decision-making capabilities resulting from a clearer view of available resources, increasing demand, and relevant competition;
- Improved faculty engagement, which ensures less faculty turnover and increased skills and knowledge levels; and
- Better records management across the institution for faculty, staff, and students that includes fewer duplicates, mistakes, and missing records.
Student Success
Even more important than how the institution runs in the current educational climate is student success. It’s one thing to get students to campus.
It’s a completely different undertaking to keep them there and to ensure that they complete their degree or certification program and become contributing members of society. An ERP solution can help institutions achieve higher student success rates by:
- Simplifying, streamlining, and automating student enrolment to reduce the amount of time it takes to coordinate enrolment as well as the cost of staffing the enrolment period;
- Improving student guidance through monitoring and alerts to assist struggling students and better guide successful students; and
- Providing an integrated view of the student life cycle, from recruitment through graduation, to ensure that students takes the most direct path to their goals and receive the guidance necessary to achieve success, regardless of what obstacles may arise during their educational career.
As competition increases and education methods change, ERP can help institutions become as agile and responsive as their corporate counterparts.
Unit4, the author of Agresso ERP, is an innovator and leader in the Higher Education ERP Vertical.
Their solutions encompass, the traditional canvass of ERP, Unit4 Business World On!, a unified finance, HR, payroll, projects and procurement system; as well as:
SystemsAccountants is a global provider of interim & permanent recruitment services specific to ERP / Analytics delivery and business change.
Our Unit4 practice works with clients to enable them to hire entire project teams, or bolster their in-house capability to cost effectively implement & support Unit4 Business World ERP applications, as well as the full range of Higher Education modules and functionality.
If you would like further information or wish to discuss a forthcoming project, please don’t hesitate to contact our North American Managing Director, Adrian Knight:
E: adrian@systemsaccountants.com | Dir: (312) 548-0841 | Cell: (312) 509 320
