Three institutions within The State University System of New York (SUNY)— Columbia-Greene Community College, The College of Environmental Science and Forestry (ESF), andRockland Community College—have each chosen to deploy Ellucian Banner enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems. Moving to Banner will help all three schools modernize key business processes as well as the overall student experience. Columbia-Greene, ESF and Rockland are joining the already large Banner community within the SUNY system—48 of the 64 SUNY institutions are on Ellucian Banner.
Columbia-Greene, ESF, and Rockland were all facing similar situations with different ERPs—whether it was a system approaching de-support, small IT staff or too many customizations, a solution to relieve pressure and also reach institutional goals was needed.
Built specifically for higher education environments, Banner will help unify data across diverse systems and locations while streamlining business processes institution-wide. Banner will give users the ability to view and manage student and college data in a single dashboard, simplifying administrative processes for faculty and administrators, and keeping students engaged and focused on success.
Given that 75 percent of SUNY schools are running the same solution, the university system has developed some shared services that assist with maintenance and hosting.
The SUNY Student Information and Campus Administrative Systems (SICAS) Program supports the administrative software, service and training needs for campuses using Ellucian solutions—including state reporting, support, and upgrades for Banner.
SUNY Information Technology Exchange Center (ITEC) supports multi-campus, computer-related group activities targeted at improving the quality, quantity and cost-effectiveness of campus-based and university-wide computer services.
“Columbia Greene, ESF, and Rockland moving to Banner doesn’t just give them access to the most advanced ERP on the market, they are also now able to leverage the shared services within SUNY,” said Bill Grau, Executive Director of the SICAS Program. “Having a support system for maintenance, services, and meeting state requirements like SICAS partnered with the ability to host all modules in the SUNY private cloud with ITEC lets small IT shops augment their offerings and modernize solutions with little to no impact on their IT footprint.”