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Introduction
The University of Virginia, like most other large research
institutions, has in the past used a purchasing strategy for
implementing core business applications that chose the best product
on the market for each business function being automated. Little, if
any, weight was given to the software vendor's offerings in other
business areas. A team is now being formed to determine if this
strategy should be modified in light of changing conditions in the
marketplace and at our institution. The team will be composed of
interested vice presidents and representatives from central
administration, the Provost Office, the faculty, and ITC.
Rationale
The ongoing rationale for the current application selection
strategy has been to target the information processing requirements
for specific business functions, one function at a time. Use of this
strategy has been bolstered by the dearth of vendor offerings in the
marketplace that could come close to meeting needs in a wide-range of
business areas. This approach has indeed met the objective we set out
to achieve. We now have functionally rich applications that serve the
needs of the central administrative offices very well, allowing them
to provide better service to the University at large. But, as the
central administrative offices strive to streamline processes and
provide more direct services to academic departments, the faculty,
and the student body, a price is being paid for past specialization.
Because of the unique construction of each application, each has a
very different way of inputting transactions and presenting
information. While our current electronic forms and information
warehouse strategies will go a long way in isolating many of the
casual users from this application uniqueness, they will not be fully
successful in hiding diverse application interfaces from users who
need more in-depth access to these applications. Another problem is
that ITC is required to support whatever technical architecture the
vendors has chosen to use. ITC currently must develop and maintain
staff skills in a vast array of programming languages, file
management systems, data naming standards, and software design
philosophies, and this adds significant complexity to the task of
enhancing applications to meet changing business needs.
To date, there has not been any better approach for meeting the
very complex needs of a major research university. While there have
been a few vendors in the marketplace that offered fully integrated
suites of business applications, these applications tended to work
better for small institutions where needs were less complex and where
it was easier to change business processes to match standard product
lines. There are now, however, some interesting new vendor offerings
that promise highly functional, integrated applications with common
user interfaces and common technical architectures. Some of our peer
institutions are looking seriously at partnering with a single vendor
to replace a number of their stand-alone legacy business
applications. Several major institutions, like Cornell, have already
signed contracts. These decisions seem to be driven not only by the
fact that there are better software offerings on the market, but also
by a sense of urgency in enhancing application portfolios to meet the
dynamic needs of academic departments, faculty, and staff and an
increased willingness to reengineer business processes to be
congruent with integrated product strategies. We believe the
University should evaluate its current strategy for acquiring and
implementing applications in light of these new developments to
determine whether or not a change of strategy is right for this
institution.
Mission of the Task Force
The task force will be charged with making a recommendation to the
Senior Cabinet regarding either 1) the continued selection of
application vendor products through independent purchasing decisions
or 2) a new commitment to a vendor partner who would be our primary
provider of core business applications (assuming mandatory
requirements for a given business function can be met). The task
force will focus on strategic issues surrounding this question and
will not engage in an in-depth, comprehensive analysis of
requirements for every business function and evaluation of products
to meet these requirements. The task force is made up of the Steering
Committee and the Support Group. Members of the Steering Committee
are:
Polley Ann McClure (Co-Chair)
Vice President and Chief Information Officer
Leonard W. Sandridge, Jr. (Co-Chair)
Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer
Peter W. Low
Vice President and Provost
Colette Capone
Vice President for Management and Budget
William W. Harmon
Vice President for Student Affairs
Don E. Detmer
Senior Vice President
Robert E. Reynolds
Senior Associate Vice President for Health Sciences
Charles B. Fitzgerald
Associate Vice President and Director of Development
Charles T. Gillet
Assistant Vice President for Finance
Dolly Prenzel
Chief Contracting Officer
Randall R. Smith
Dean for Administration, McIntire School of Commerce
The Support Group is divided into five study groups. Information
concerning these study groups is provided below.
Evaluation Steps
Steps the task force will take in reaching a conclusion
include:
By 10/21/96:
By 11/11/96:
By 11/27/96:
By 1/24/97:
2/12/97:
The study groups will be comprised of members of the ISTF Support Group and other members of the University community as seen fit. The study groups are to conduct an educational review informing the entire task force about the options that are available in the current environment.
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