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Saint Mary's University
Project Nexus
Unified System Helps a Small University to be Internationally Competitive
Challenge
Today's students are technology savvy and use the Internet to interact. They expect their universities to interact with them in the same way. For St. Mary's University in Halifax, provision of services through the Internet is particularly important to help attract and retain international students. Fifteen per cent of the university's 7,100 full-time students came from 58 foreign countries in the 2005/06 academic year.
St. Mary's had seen the importance of the Internet growing since the late 1990s. Looking at its registration process, which took a couple of weeks each fall as students lined up for hours to present their paper forms and fees to registration staff, university executives knew that a better system was needed.
But it wasn't just a matter of automating registration. St. Mary's, relatively small with 300 faculty and an annual budget of $96 million, also knew it had to find an affordable way to:
- Replace existing databases with a single integrated database capable of scalability and flexibility for all student services;
- Upgrade access and user interfaces for students, faculty, academic administrators and staff administrators;
- Improve reporting and planning capabilities;
- Improve administrative systems for departments including Human Resources, Finance, Alumni, Development and Student Support.
Solution
The university's Executive Management Group, led by the president, devised a collaborative approach to modernize St. Mary's in incremental steps beginning in 1998. To do this they had to change the institutional mind-set that had long been in place - St. Mary's was founded in 1802 - and make the university a more integrated and effective organization through technology.
The method they chose was unusual. Rather than setting up discrete functional systems and linking them, St. Mary's implemented the entire suite of a single enterprise resource planning system (ERP) with a single database. This integrated system, implemented without expensive customization, provides a full range of administrative functions for student, alumni and donor relationships, and financial and human-resource management.
Known as Nexus, the system is based on the Banner ERP system from SunGard Higher Education. The entire suite of service and administrative modules, plus the Luminis portal, was implemented incrementally between 1998 and 2006, including a version upgrade along the way.
Many collaborative efforts helped make the project a success. The Executive Management Group oversaw a steering committee with faculty and student representation that set the project priorities and maintained momentum. A faculty member led the portal implementation, and an academic department gave up laboratory space for two years to provide a dedicated Nexus/Banner team room.
Results
The improvement to student services has enabled St. Mary's to compete globally for students and meet the high technology expectations of students. Service to students has been greatly enhanced by online learning management and course delivery. Students can apply to the university, register for and manage their courses, make payments and interact with professors and other students, all online. Whereas the university used to be able to register only 60 to 80 students an hour, it can now register 900 students in 30 minutes.
Once students graduate and their records are turned over to alumni management - a process that now takes seconds instead of days -- the system enables the university to stay in communication with them and track donations. In the years before Nexus, St. Mary's raised an average $1.6 million a year in donations. In the three years since the alumni-management module was implemented, donations have averaged $4.3 million.
More consistent and accurate application of interest charged on late fee payments has resulted in increased annual revenue of $168,000. Accounts receivable collection is up $600,000 and bad debts are down $133,000.
Administration improvements include employee self-service, online access to financial data and reports as well as class registration information. Improved timeliness and accuracy of records means that the Finance Department can close its month-end statements five days faster than previously.
Innovative Use of Technology
St. Mary's is unique in having integrated a commercial ERP system with a student registration system. It is common practice to modify systems to match the business practices at an institution, but St. Mary's saved time and money by reworking all of its academic, service and administrative processes to bring them under one standard environment.
Nexus is implemented as a thin client known as Internet Native Banner. It relies on Oracle as a database management system and application server. The solution uses HP OpenVMS for the database servers and Sun Solaris systems for the application Web servers. Microsoft Windows XP is the typical end-user system but the university supports Apple Macintosh systems as well.
The Saint Mary's campus is contained in one city block but the university operates two other city campuses for specialized and outreach programs. Access to those locations is via a city-wide dark fibre ring in which Saint Mary's University is a primary partner. Access for students and alumni can be from anywhere in the world via the Internet.
A 2007 CIPA Winner!
For its excellent application of information technology to transform processes and bring benefits to its stakeholders, St. Mary's University has been awarded a 2007 CIPA Silver Award of Excellence in the Customer Centricity, Not For Profit category.
Technology partners
Dymaxion Research
Hewlett-Packard (Canada) Inc.
IMP Solutions
Oracle Corporation Canada Inc.
SunGard Higher Education
Sun Microsystems Inc.
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