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Fulton County Schools of Georgia starts an SAP project. I read it first at SAP INFO Magazine. Making the Grade:

Fulton County School District, Georgia’s fourth-largest school district, has selected SAP solutions to support the district’s growth, enhance system-wide visibility and better measure return on investment in programs and facilities. After a comprehensive evaluation of several enterprise software vendors, including Oracle, Fulton County Schools District chose the mySAP Business Suite family of business applications to help increase operational efficiency, improve financial accountability, and free up more time to focus on student needs.

This news makes different meaning for me, since I worked as a computer teacher for two years in FSA which is a charter school in Fulton Schools System. So I am familiar with Fulton Schools and even I live in Fulton County and my daughter goes to a Fulton County Elementary School.

After a quick search I found few information about Fulton School’s SAP project.

SAP Public Services, Inc. had made an announcement on April 5, 2006: Fulton County School District Makes the Grade with SAP.

• Managing Growth - Fulton County School District has experienced significant growth, enrolling more than 6,000 new students a year and hiring 1,200 new teachers and staff annually. The administration realized its mix of existing legacy software packages could not support the operational needs of its booming infrastructure and commenced a school construction and modernization program. Using SAP applications, Fulton County aims to improve key business processes including financial management, personnel administration, procurement, payroll processing and inventory management.
• Improving Business Insight - Previously, data was scattered across 90 facilities in paper form or in several disparate legacy systems, making it difficult to have a complete view of all district schools and departments. Consolidating information onto a single, integrated platform will help school officials make faster, more informed decisions. The school district also aims to better account for and service its more than 81,000 students and 9,700 employees, for example, through more efficient processing of paychecks without having to hire additional back-office personnel and by accelerating the recruitment of qualified teachers.
• Sharpening Focus - The SAP system will enable the Fulton County superintendent to collect, manage, analyze and learn from a wide array of data, allowing more informed decisions about program spending and how to best put money back into classrooms. Additionally, a consolidated view of financial information will help the administration reduce the risk of rogue spending.

It can be seen the Board Agenda Item which was held about SAP Implementation and Services on May 11, 2006.

The business systems in use at Fulton County Schools were architected and implemented nineteen years ago. The inflexibility of these existing business systems and the increasing complexity of school district business requirements have led to inefficiencies, redundant processes and duplicative data within FCS.

An integrated business system was approved in December 2005 for purchase and a contract has now been finalized with SAP. This software recommendation was developed from a systematic review process by a 12 member evaluation committee.

FCS recognizes that the integration of this new replacement business software is required to break the cycle of inefficiency and seeks to implement best practices found in the SAP suite of business applications and related third-party software solutions. The scope of work for this proposal includes the software implementation and post-implementation services for the chosen SAP business system software.

As with the software selection process, an eight member evaluation committee used a systematic review process to develop this recommendation. The Source Selection Official reviewed the recommendation of the evaluation committee to choose CIBER, Inc.

It seems Fulton County Schools chose CIBER for implementing and supporting its SAP project after evaluation among CIBER, IBM and BearingPoint. They wanted some references from these implementers and they gave these public sector references.

IBM

• University of Cincinnati
• Clark County, Nevada (unable to contact)
• Erie County, NY (unable to contact)
• Metropolitan District Commission
• Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (was provided a reference both IBM and BearingPoint. BearingPoint was the prime contractor and IBM was the sub-contractor on that implementation.)
• State of Arkansas
• Gwinnett County Schools (IBM did not provide K-12 public education references, so two public school systems were added to their list. While not provided as a reference, Gwinnett County Schools was listed in the proposal text as a successful IBM ERP implementation.)
• Hillsborough County Schools (IBM did not provide K-12 public education references, so two public school systems were added to their list. While not provided as a reference, Gwinnett County Schools was listed in the proposal text as a successful IBM ERP implementation.)

BeairingPoint

• Commonwealth of Pennsylvania (was provided a reference both IBM and BearingPoint. BearingPoint was the prime contractor and IBM was the sub-contractor on that implementation.)
• Gwinnett County, GA
• John Hopkins University
• SC Department of Mental Health (unable to contact)
• Duval County Public Schools

CIBER

• Los Angeles County Office of Education
• Orange County Public Schools
• Sacramento County, CA
• The State of Indiana (unable to contact)
• The State of Delaware (unable to contact)
• McKesson (unable to contact)
• Rockdale County Schools (sent an e-mail reference for CIBER)

After contacting to those references and asking some questions about organizational fit, project management (on time, financial closing, first payroll, etc), budget (within budget, change order activity, etc.), objectives, knowledge transfer, legacy system, comments; CIBER had been chosen. I think CIBER’s Orange County Public Schools of Florida reference has big impact on final decision. You can see what Orange County Public Schools did with SAP: Managing for Growth and Future Improvement in K-12 schools at SAPPHIRE ‘06.
CIBER, Inc. (NYSE: CBR) is the 15th largest system integrator in North America. Founded in 1974, CIBER has grown into a leading international systems integration consultancy, providing end-to-end solutions for many of Fortune 500, federal, state and local governments, and K-12 organizations. With 60 U.S offices, 22 European offices, and 3 offices in Asia its 8,000 employees serve 17 countries.

After collecting this background information I attended Board of Education meeting at Hamilton Holmes ES on June 8th, 2006. Before the public meeting there was an SAP Implementation Workshop. I just could able to attend the last part of the workshop. Fulton County Schools’ employees and CIBER consultants were there to answer the questions of board members. I saw there was a discussion about involvement of external manager in the project. CIBER naturally wants to manage all project itself and so it is going to cost a lot to the customer. There were six CIBER people and after the board approved the project they left. I think this was the last decision for the project and CIBER will start the project soon.

They chose mySAP Business Suite but which modules.

Human Capital Management (HCM)

• Personnel and Benefits Administration
• Benefits Administration
• Organizational Management
• Time Management and Cross Application Timesheets
• Leave Management
• Payroll
• Concurrent Employment
• Position Budgeting and Control
• Personnel Cost Planning and Simulation
• Personnel Development
• Migration of Identified Legacy Human Resources Data
• Standard HCM Reports and Certain Custom HCM Reports
• Legal and Compliance Reporting
• Pension Gold Integration

Financials (FI/CO)

• General Ledger
• Accounts Payable
• Fixed Asset Management
• Account Receivable
• Funds Management
• Grants Management
• Budgeting
• Cash Management
• Migration of Identified Legacy Financial Data
• Standard Financial Reports and Certain Custom Financial Reports

Purchasing and Inventory Management (MM)

• Purchasing
• Inventory Management
• Vendor Selection and Management
• Contract Management
• Migration of Identified Legacy Purchasing and Inventory Data
• Standard Purchasing and Inventory Reports

This is not very big project. HR, FI, CO, MM… A functional consultant for each module, one Basis consultant and one or two ABAP developer. SAP ABAP Developer mostly will do data transfer (batch input, maybe LSMW), and report programming (standard and ALV reporting.). But when we look at the budget and time plan, it seems more consultants will involve in the project. The cost of this project $19,640,814 including $16,988,962 implementation cost, $2,155,667 post implementation (5 years), etc. I guess it already started on May 2006, and it is going to go Live on May 2007. I know that CIBER started to look for local consultants to work in this project. I am very familiar with this kind of projects and if I get a chance I would involve in that project. I can help this project especially for financials and MM modules.

Questions: How will the teachers and staff in schools use the system? Is there a web project (internet or intranet) to connect to SAP and enter data via browser?

Tags: project

This entry was posted on Tuesday, June 20th, 2006 at 8:42 pm and is filed under SAP. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.