Making the Grade at Saint Louis University

John Goerke, director and project manager of the Banner conversion at Saint Louis University.

WebFOCUS Extends Legacy Reports While Enhancing New ERP System

In 1818, the administrative tasks of Saint Louis University (SLU) were much simpler than they are today. Back then, the entire institution was housed in a one-story building. Phrases like "data access" and "enterprise integration"were not only unknown, but unnecessary, since most information could be acquired simply by calling across the hallway or walking into the next room. Today the university is one of the area's largest employers, with 6,200 people working in 150 buildings across a 300-acre campus, and the efficient flow of information is a major endeavor for a staff of IT professionals.

For the past decade, SLU has depended on Information Builders FOCUS as a reporting tool for its SCT/Plus ERP applications running on HP OpenVMS systems. That experience is seeing them in good stead as they make the transition to SCT Banner. To create an enterprise-caliber reporting environment for this new ERP system, SLU chose Information Builders WebFOCUS.

"We are making a multimillion-dollar change to our enterprise information systems, and WebFOCUS continues to give us the reports we need, in the formats our users are accustomed to," says John Goerke, director and project manager of the Banner conversion at Saint Louis University. "Thanks to WebFOCUS, the changeover has been almost transparent. We have had zero downtime, yet we are ending up with a much better reporting system."

With more than 11,000 students, Saint Louis University offers a broad array of undergraduate, graduate, and professional degree programs on campuses in St. Louis, Missouri, and Madrid, Spain. The university depends on WebFOCUS for everything from student registration and admissions to financials, human resources, payroll, alumni development, and fundraising. Reports for all these departments were previously created on a mainframe computer and delivered to recipients as hardcopy.

"In the best-case scenario, a report request would not have been delivered until the following day," Goerke says. "Now, with WebFOCUS, users can request reports with their Web browsers and get the results instantly with a few mouse clicks. We have eliminated all paper printing for administrative systems at the university and saved more than $100,000 per year in printing, labor, supplies, and maintenance. WebFOCUS has paid for itself with those savings alone – and it's just the start."

Studying User Needs

When SLU made the decision to move its administrative systems to SCT Banner, Goerke and other IT professionals at the university determined they would need a general-purpose report writer to take full advantage of the new system. "We evaluated reporting tools from Cognos, Brio, Crystal Reports, Oracle, and Information Builders, and we enlisted users from throughout the university to help with the selection process,"Goerke explains. "The majority of users chose WebFOCUS because it offered the best capabilities and had a rapid learning curve. We didn't taint their decisions by giving them brand names - these were 'blind' demonstrations. They accepted WebFOCUS at face value because they thought it was the most comprehensive, the easiest to use, and could extend the reach of what they were already comfortable doing."

While end users favored WebFOCUS for its power and usability, IT decision-makers chose it because of its wide-scale deployment capabilities, flexibility, and price. "We also valued Information Builders' ability to work with SLU as a partner, not just as a software vendor,"Goerke adds.

Learning New Skills

With skilled resources on site, SLU was able to deploy WebFOCUS without outside help. "We attended some excellent training classes through Information Builders' Education department, but mostly we were able to teach ourselves and build on our existing knowledge," says Goerke. "The learning curve was minimal because we already knew FOCUS."

For the most part, learning the new environment involved teaching COBOL programmers HTML and Javaâ„¢ since they were new to the Web environment. "WebFOCUS provided a lot of flexibility, giving us options we never had before,"Goerke explains. "Our programmers learned how to create many types of reports and display results in formats such as Microsoft Excel and Adobe Acrobat."

Already, WebFOCUS has been rolled out to users across many departments. Faculty members can create reports to help them manage student performance, while administrators use it for back-office functions such as registration and accounting. "Most staff members can obtain the reports they need without involving IT at all,"Goerke says. "They can receive reports at their desktops whenever they need them."

As a result, the university has seen a boost in productivity for all types of reporting and information delivery. People can make decisions faster based on current data, allowing the IT staff to concentrate on higher-value activities.

Due to the extensive data access capabilities of WebFOCUS, users continue to receive all the information and reports they received in the old SCT system. "Our financial users can easily access all of our legacy accounting information through WebFOCUS, so my staff required no training," says Goerke. "WebFOCUS will be pulling the data from our new Banner ERP system, but users will not be conscious of the change."

Spreading the Word

Goerke and his colleagues have met and spoken with IT pros at other schools that are adopting the Banner ERP system. As part of this process, SLU and Information Builders are creating a Center of Excellence to showcase the WebFOCUS reporting technology for SCT's Plus and Banner products. "Other schools are following our example as they deploy WebFOCUS as a report writer for their Banner systems,"Goerke says. "These organizations can use WebFOCUS for many different types of business intelligence functions as well as to retain continuity between their new and old information systems. WebFOCUS maximizes investments in complex ERP systems by simplifying access to information and supplying a reporting system that is easy for businesspeople to use."

Looking ahead, Goerke envisions expanding the use of WebFOCUS throughout the university. "Once we have the Banner migration behind us, we want to deploy an executive dashboard and associated business intelligence applications to help our administrators with trend analysis and strategic decision-making," he says. "Thanks to the well-integrated WebFOCUS environment, these decision-support activities will flow naturally from the infrastructure we are already putting in place. WebFOCUS has helped our organization immensely, and we believe that its value to the university will continue to grow in the years ahead."