Technology & Learning - January 2008 - (Page 19)

Notes from a Centralized A renewed interest in ERP has school administrators reconsidering the vast business management systems they abandoned a few short years ago. By Melissa Houston and Patrick Goggins I t used to be much easier to get paid by the San Diego Unified School District. A lot easier, that is, if you didn’t work there. Saddled with an antiquated computer system and manual, repetitive data entry of time cards, officials at California’s second-largest school district discovered the payroll department was mistakenly issuing $1 million a year in paychecks to former and retired employees. And the human resources department was in no shape to catch such a staggering oversight because employees were relying on a 30-year-old, mainframe-style computer system not compatible with other school departments—and one that required staff to regularly re-input information for the district’s 20,000 employees. How to fix the problem? SDUSD officials knew they had to start over. Like other school systems across the nation plagued by overburdened and inadequate information technology, San Diego embarked on a complete overhaul of its computer network and data center. In 2002, officials there purchased a $26 million business management system, known as enterprise resource planning, or ERP, that handles all of the finance, HR, and payroll demands of the district’s $1.1 billion–a-year operation. Today, the SDUSD boasts a successful enterprise-wide system run by Oracle/PeopleSoft software that has reformed every aspect of its operations. But unlike other school systems across the nation that have attempted—and failed at— such projects, in San Diego, ERP works. “On the business side, this is the most important thing we’ve ever done,” says Michael Casey, executive director and CTO of the 136,000- Technology & Learning January 2008 | 19

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Technology & Learning - January 2008

Technology & Learning - January 2008 Contents Editor's Desk News & Trends Product Guide Reviews Cover Story: Ten Top Tech Trends ERP Makes a Comeback Tossing Out Textbooks LOY Profile Series Higher Ed How To Bottom Line What's New Emerging Tech

Technology & Learning - January 2008

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