Project Update

   From February through April, 257 individuals participated in a process to define the vision of a new adminsitrative system and to define requirements to the user community. Under the leadership of Ron Lancaster, a tool called Decision Director (from Advantiv, Inc.) was being used to guide this process. The initial phase is now complete, the results accumulated and we are now ready to finalize the results in preparation of a request for proposal from administrative systems vendors.

   A project team for this next phase of the project has been finalized. Jerry Ameling from ITS has been designated as BGSU Project Coordinator. Also, BGSU has contracted with BearingPoint to lead this portion of the process. Bob Swab of BearingPoint has been named as the project manager. Bob is very familiar with the DecisionDirector tool and we look forward to his involvement as we move toward new systems selection and implementation. Bob's first full day on campus was July 16 - Welcome Bob!

   Forum participants answered a series of questions via the DecisionDirector software. Information was collected in the form of brainstorming sessions, the importance/satisfaction survey, and system assessment. A brief status of each forum is presented below.

Brainstorming Sessions - BGSU stakeholders participated in brainstorming sessions that focused on developing a shared vision, goals and objectives, and identifying critical issues. The brainstorming session generated 325 comments from stakeholders throughout the university.
Status: Complete - a detailed transcript is available below

Importance/Satisfaction Survey - The Importance/Satisfaction Survey presented stakeholders with 479 functional areas of the Student, Finance, HR, and Advancement systems. Participants were asked to assign High, Medium, or Low importance and satisfaction ratings to the corresponding functional areas of the existing BGSU systems. Participants were also invited to provide comments for each functional area.

The purpose of this exercise is three-fold: First, to give participants a rapid orientation to the organization and scope of the Decision Director ERP system KnowledgePacks; second, to identify (or confirm) critical functional areas that are of high importance but low satisfaction, and, third, to set a baseline against which the changes brought about by new systems can be measured.
Status: Final analytical reports generated. Review in process.

System Assessment - The System Assessment forum presented over 6,000 functional and technical requirements spanning the higher education administrative systems. Each participant reviewed requirements within their respective areas of interest. Participants rated the need for each requirement. Many key additional requirements were identified by the user participants.
Status: Analytic reports completed and posted to project library, Dissonance reports are being reviewed, Requirements listing are being reviewed for non-voted items.

   The next step is to finalize the requirements through a validation forum. This forum enables a core group of stakeholders to review and affirm the results and ends with a final set of requirements with which to generate the administrative system RFP.

   A vendor requirement validation team meeting is planned for July 31, 2003. Continue to watch for more information in the coming weeks as progress continues.