TECHNOLOGY PLANNING & PRIORITIES COMMITTEE

July 6, 2011

Present:  Bev Nagel, Joel Cooper, Fred Rogers, Paul Thiboutot, Hudlin Wagner, Jim Fergerson

Absent:  Nathan Grawe, Joe Hargis

Guests:  Linda Borene, Julie Latham, Julie Anderson, Les LaCroix, Sue Traxler, Matt Lauterbach, Sara Oster, Julie Thornton, Jody Friedow, Richard Goerwitz, Linda Thornton

Agenda:

1. Make a decision on a Colleague reporting tool: Business Objects/DROA or SSRS.
2. Make a decision on proposal to replace Recruitment PLUS software:

Datatel’s Recruiter vs. Technolutions’ Slate

Make a decision on a Colleague reporting tool:  Business Objects/DROA or SSRS

Prior to our meeting, several documents were sent out to the committee for review: Administrative Computing Advisory Committee summary recommendations to TP&PC – Business Intelligence reporting tools; and Colleague User Group Steering Committee – Colleague reporting solution considerations.

Throughout spring term several meetings were held by ACAC and the CUG steering committee to discuss the two alternatives presented by the ITS reporting tools working group.  After lengthy discussions based on the information at hand and assuming that “dollar cost” was not the only determining factor, the majority opinion was that Business Objects DROA would be the best reporting solution for Carleton in the long run.  However, on June 30th the full CUG Steering Committee met and end users raised many additional questions.  A third option, or bridge, from Unidata to SQL was suggested with Carleton going ahead with the database conversion, but without committing funds yet to a Business Intelligence reporting solution until more information is known about costs and how this would integrate with our other databases and reporting needs.  The CUG group presented several questions to TP&PC to get more guidance from them about long term goals, funding, and whether we have a long term commitment as an institution to Datatel compared to other “best of breed” solutions.  Carleton currently does not share a common enterprise management solution and there are no plans to move toward a single solution.  It was also pointed out that DROA is not a solution for the Business Office at this time since they need real time reporting for running the institution and DROA doesn’t provide real time reporting yet.

 After discussion of the pros and cons, staff time involved, and costs associated with all of these options, the TP&PC committee endorsed a “bridge” approach.  This means that for the next several years, there will be a mix of converting existing views and/or programs to the SQL environment, reporting from the data warehouse, along with some testing and best uses of SSRS (yet to be determined).  There was also support for funding needed for consulting. 

Make a decision on proposal to replace Recruitment PLUS software:

Several documents were sent out prior to this meeting for the committee’s review:  Proposal for software to replace recruitment PLUS and ACAC’s summary recommendations to TP&PC – Recruitment PLUS replacement database.  The Admission’s selection committee narrowed down their choice of options to Datatel’s Recruiter and Technolutions Slate.   After people from several departments attended demos of both products, they agreed that Technolutions Slate is the better, less expensive product. This choice was also supported by ACAC. 

Several questions arose about this product being in the CLOUD and privacy issues.  The company has assured us of any privacy issues and we had them answer an industry standard questionnaire. They also have multiple hosting locations in the event the Web is down.  The company is small and they only want to take on a certain number of new clients, so Admissions wants to move forward as soon as possible.  St. Olaf has already signed on as one of their new clients.  After discussion, the TP&PC committee approved the purchase of Slate as the replacement product for Recruitment PLUS. 

 

Meeting adjourned at 9:30.

Submitted by,

Candyce Lelm