The Alamo Colleges in San Antonio, Texas is the tenth largest college system in the United States, and the second largest system in Texas. The district includes five highly autonomous colleges, offers over 325 degree and certificate programs, serves about 100,000 students in academic and continuing education programs, employs about 5,300 faculty and staff, and had a budget of $277 million for 2009.
The Alamo Colleges moved from five separate PLUS databases into one shared BANNER database. The implementation included Student, Finance, Human Resources, General, and Texas Connection functionality, as well as third-party products. Extensive preparation for the project involved partnership with the LECG-SMART consulting firm, a multi-year effort to standardize data and policies across the campuses, comprehensive project management and governance structures, and extensive planning with a wide-ranging and detailed approach to Business Process Analyses and re-engineering.
There were things that went quite well, and things that, despite all of our efforts, could have been improved.
We would like to share our experiences with this implementation from the point of view of upper institutional administration, and offer our insights regarding the planning and execution of a large and complicated ERP system project.