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Conversion Quandary

Filed under “Software” and “Work”
by Adam at 5:57 PM on March 9, 2004

6 Comments

I work for a small private college that is in the planning stage for a major institution-wide administrative database conversion. Currently, we use Jenzabar TE (née CMDS Teams 2000). The vendors and products that are competing for the contract are Datatel (Colleague), Jenzabar (EX), SCT (PowerCampus), and Three Rivers (CAMS).

Does anyone out there have prior experience with any of these products? There seems to be a common fear among the rank-and-file who are involved in the selection process that the ultimate decision will be handed down from on high by the Powers that Be. Not a comforting thought when those who’ve worked closely with technology for very long at all have seen how vulnerable upper administration can be to a slick sales presentation and pretty GUI.

If there are compelling arguments for or against any of these platforms or vendors, I’d like to have them on hand to help steer the selection process if possible. After having some success posing questions about web design and U.S. currency on this blog, I’ve decided to give it a shot with topic.

I’m interested in hearing anything and everything, from the sneaky gotchas that creep in a year after implementation to the surprise and delight at what a new set of tools can let you accomplish. Thanks in advance! :-)

Updates:

  • 3/10/2004 — Edited to remove some potentially job-threatening sarcasm. Decided to listen to those quiet, nagging doubts (A.K.A. “common sense”).

  • 11/20/2004 — We made a decision on this some months ago, but for some reason I forgot to update this entry until I got a related e-mail through this blog’s contact form last week.

    We ultimately went with PowerCampus from SunGuard SCT because it was designed for smaller institutions like ours, was a unified product with a full feature set (no vendor nickel-and-diming us do death for “extras” that are really essentials — apparently a Datatel vice), was economically feasible on our budget, and came from a respected company with a history in the educational ERP market.

    Thanks are due to everyone who gave me input on this decision, both in the comments and via e-mail. All the information and perspectives were a big help. :-)

Adam is a web developer and graphic designer who lives and works in south-central Kansas. He likes to speak his mind, both here and in his business blog. He only rarely writes about himself in the third person, honest. If you’d like to work with Adam, drop him a line.

6 Comments

  1. I have worked in the MIS higher ed scene for the last 20 years. For most of those years I have worked at Datatel sites. Although not a perfect ERP (there are none), Datatel has a couple things going for it: they are responsive to customer wants, needs and criticisms and their Solution Center is very responsive - either giving you solutions right away or getting the right person to help you. Some criticize Datatel for not being up on the latest technologies which is not completely true but they are cautious which I like because I don’t like to be on the “bleeding edge”, which can be very costly. They cater to a very wide, diverse market from the under 1,000 to over 20,000 higher-ed institutions. The Datatel network of users is very extensive and extremely helpful on the Datatel listserves. Datatel is a major player and will be around for a long time. I don’t know if that is the case for Jenzabar which is struggling. I have heard that Powercampus is very very limited and I haven’t come across any college or university that uses Three Rivers so I would be wary of them. Good luck - I hope your school makes the right decision. If you wish to continue this conversation off-line - send me post an email address on this site in a response to this.

    Comment by bob — March 12, 2004 @ 7:30 am

  2. Bob: Great info! Thanks for your input. Personally, I’m getting the impression from the RFP process that SCT PowerCampus is attractive on the front end and a mess on the back end. Datatel’s front-end interface is a little more challenging for typical end users, but is also more powerful and is tied to a stronger back-end infrastructure (again, based on my observations thus far). Jenzabar’s product seems to have improved dramatically over the former Teams Elite version that EX is based on. As you say, however, they seem to be struggling in the industry.

    I plan on producing an executive summary of my opinions after the presentations are wrapped up, and delivering that to my supervisor and the head of the IT department. I don’t know how much good it will do, but I’m determined to make my voice heard since I’m the last person left in my department with a thorough knowledge of our current system. Might as well volunteer to be the “squeaky wheel,” right? ;-)

    Thanks again for your assistance. As for an e-mail address, check my “About” page. I’ve posted one there that is encoded for spam protection.

    Comment by Adam — March 12, 2004 @ 11:10 am

  3. Adam,
    I am glad you found my previous post helpful. One thing I wanted to point out to you since you brought it up. I don’t know if you knew this:

    SCT bought Powercampus from a small company called ABT a few years ago. As far as I know, SCT just slapped their name on it and did nothing to upgrade the system in any substantial way. I do know someone who used to work at an ABT school (pre-SCT) who complained constantly about ABT. He said their software was loaded with bugs and they could not get the fixes many times. He found that the problems really hindered his work. He told me they had many meetings with the company and other users of the product but nothing came of it. They finally tossed the ABT system out. If the software has not been improved then expect trouble. It is possible SCT has done a major overhaul of the ABT product but I doubt it since most of their resources have gone into their main product Banner and also their old dog they bought years ago - IA (Information Associates - sometimes known as IA plus which is only maintained and not marketed). Also, now that Sungard has bought SCT and Sungard has their own products - what is going to become of all these other packages such as IA and ABT? Something to think about.

    What institution do you work for or if you don’t want to divulge that information, where abouts is your school located? Maybe I can direct you to some possible contacts at nearby Datatel sites.
    Bob

    Comment by bob — March 12, 2004 @ 8:47 pm

  4. Hi Bob,

    Good to hear back from you. I’d prefer not to reveal where I work here. Blogging non-anonymously is a little unnerving as it is, and I’m not sure that I want to make it too easy for any random crazies to track me down or start sending me dead fish and roses in the mail. ;-)

    I’ve got your e-mail address in my Movable Type system; I’ll send you a message there with more details.

    Thanks again,
    Adam

    Comment by Adam — March 13, 2004 @ 1:41 pm

  5. In my consulting work, I continue to be impressed about what I’m hearing about SCT PowerCampus. SCT already has over 100 institutions on this relatively young and progressive product line. Its built from the ground up for the Microsoft platform, unlike Datatel that continues to limp along on Unidata, and only has beta sites moving toward SQL Server.
    Check out the success stories for PowerCampus sites at the SCT web site (www.sct.com). The integration with PowerFAIDS and Micorosft Great Plains provides a high value solution with deep functionality thats specifically designed for smaller institutions. About half of Datatel’s clients are community colleges, with not much in common with small privates. PowerCampus has evolved in the small college environment and is packed with functionality valued by smaller schools.
    Ask Datatel clients what it was like moving to some of their “forklift” new releases like release 13 and 16.
    A college I’m aware of stated that they’d need one full time IT person for each administrative department to get the most out of Datatel. Not the kind of resources common at the smaller institutions.
    With the resources of SCT, PowerCampus has continued to be enhanced significantly since the acquisition of ABT.
    Best of luck with your project.
    Phil

    Comment by Phillip — April 2, 2004 @ 4:56 pm

  6. […] A quick lesson in private college political structures: the board of trustees hires and fires college presidents, but the president gets to pick new board members. Fiscal responsibility has been the order of the day around here since our new college president, Dick, took over for a predecessor whose financial management skills left much to be desired. Dick and Paul both wanted to keep me around through the end of the big school-wide database conversion that was in the works, but they had to go to bat for my job with the board for two years to keep me on the payroll. Dick, God bless him, has done a very good job of picking fiscally responsible board members. […]

    Pingback by Adventures in Self-Employment: Introducing Zenscope Studio (8 Ways to Sunday) — June 30, 2006 @ 4:00 pm

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