Banner- One College, One Database
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) at Tulsa Community College
What does Enterprise Resource Planning mean?
Enterprise Resource Planning, commonly called ERP, is a term coined in the 1990s, when many businesses were seeking ways to work “smarter, not harder” by integrating information and business processes.
How? By using new software to enter key information once, into a data based shared and accessed by several different business units in the organization. The results? Improved access to accurate and timely information for all users, resulting in better products and services. A business, or enterprise, could use this information in new ways to provide better products and services, resulting in higher profit and creating value for shareholders.
What does ERP mean in higher education?
Institutions of higher learning are in the business of education. While curriculum and instruction are key elements of an excellent education, institutions must also have access to accurate, timely information—about students, tuition, faculty and staff, degree programs, financial aid, class schedules, and transcripts.
Why? Colleges and universities that have access to timely, accurate information are at a competitive advantage when it comes to providing excellent service to students, alumni, donors, and communities. Such institutions, according to the business/enterprise model, are therefore more likely to attract the resources and students that allow them to offer the best facilities, teaching staff, and research opportunities.
What is TCC’s Enterprise Resource Plan (ERP)?
At TCC, the ERP incorporates student, financial aid, human resources, finance, and advancement data into one centralized database to facilitate cleaner, more streamlined data processing.
The software purchased to implement our ERP is Banner, an administrative software package developed by SunGard SCT for use in higher education. It is a highly integrated web-based system with a common database that is shared by everyone who uses Banner.
Front-end users will interact with Banner ERP through web-forms and applications that send and receive specific transactional data such as student enrollment, purchase requisitions, or financial aid disbursement. The Banner ERP may also be called “the live system” because the data it stores changes with each new operational transaction; these changes occur in real-time just as living organisms respond to impulses in their own environment.
What does this mean for me?
Whether you are a student or a member of TCC’s faculty or staff, you will eventually use Banner. Right now, administrative areas of the College are beginning to use the Finance module of the new software. Eventually, all student records, class schedules, human resource data, as well as alumni and donor relations information, will flow through Banner. Reports and statistics can be compiled in innovative ways, allowing the College to operate more efficiently and strategically.
Banner Performance Reporting and Analytics (BPRA): An Innovative Way to Transform Data Into Information
Currently standing in the shadows is a new organizational concept that is coming toTCC… Business Intelligence, or BI. Through specially designed technologies that move and store organizational data, BI places the ability to report and analyze information directly into the hands of the end-user. TCC’s BI platform is SunGard Higher Education’s Banner Performance Reporting and Analytics (BPRA) system, consisting of the Operational Data Store (ODS), Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) and Cognos BI reporting software. BPRA is will provide comprehensive, consistent, and just-in-time information to TCC’s decision-makers. Its implementation brings a shift to the way employees will think about and use TCC data; end-users will have direct access to information and will be able to author and review their own reports. Be watching this and other media for more information on BPRA and BI at TCC.
What’s next?
IT@TCC will keep Faculty and Staff updated through Lotus Notes and with links on this webpage to a tab on MyTCC.
We look forward to assisting you in learning and implementing our ERP.
Your Information Technology Team, working in tandem with the Banner functional teams.
one College, connecting through IT@TCC
