Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) Replacement Project: Northern Kentucky University, Greater Cincinnati Region

Overview

Northern Kentucky University will replace the current Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system that supports our core business, academic, and operational functions and processes. Our new system, Workday, will be a modern, scalable, and flexible Software as a Service (SaaS) cloud-based system that offer long term (5+ years) capabilities to adjust as the University's operational needs grow.

Replacing the ERP and reporting systems includes, but is not limited to:

Human Capital Management (HCM) and Human Resource (HR) functions
Financial (FI) functions
Student Information System (SIS) functions, including international student requirements
Financial Aid functions
Research, Grants, and Contracts functions
Reporting and Analytics functions
Auditing and compliance requirements and reporting for state and federal laws and regulations
Support of University accreditation requirements

What can we expect by moving to Workday?

Improve the Student Experience

Integrated system: Recruiting, Admissions, Registrar, Academic Affairs, Student Services, Student Accounts, Campus Life, and Professional Studies
Promote collaboration through consistency on how rules are applied, interpreted, and understood
Improve student direct access and self-service capabilities
User-friendly system
Improve accessibility

Optimize Operations for Improved Business Practices

Integrated Systems: HR, Payroll, Finance, Procurement, and Student
Utilize efficient and effective best practice business processes
Standardization and automation
Improve workflow
Reduce manual and redundant activities
Improve end-user experience
Attract and retain talent

Create a Culture of Accountability

Automate checks and balances
Enforce execution of industry best practices
Flexible and timely user-friendly analytics and reporting
Centralized source of truth for enterprise data
Ensure data integrity, data security, and data privacy
Modern analytics with dashboards
Enable leaders with powerful tools to enhance the employee and student life cycles

Align with University Strategic Vision

Enable employees to focus on student support and readiness
Scalable for growth and innovation
Unified, accessible, digital experience across all constituents
Support optimization and adaptation across the university

Fully Supported, Modern, Secure, and Resilient Solution

Highly reliable and integrated system
System is current and compliant
Simplified updates and regular delivery of new functionality
Comprehensive best-in-class system to proactively address functional and security standards
Secure access anywhere at anytime across multiple modalities

Project Phases

Phase 0: Planning | January - May 2025

Phase 1: Platform (HCM & Financials) | May 2025 - July 2026

May - July 2025: Plan
July - December 2025: Architect and Configure
January - April 2026: Test
April - July 2026: Deploy

Phase 2 | July 2026 - July 2027

Strategic Sourcing: 26-week implementation post Phase 1 go-live
Financial Planning: 24-week implementation post FDM, E2E Testing, and loading of full month of GL Actuals
Messaging: Dependent upon WD Production Release

Project Timeline

January 2025

RFP vendors determined

February 2025

Proposal presented to NKU Board of Regents

March 2025

Board of Regents approval to implement Phase 1

March 2025

Begin Phase 1: HR/FI

2025 - 2026

HR/FI activities

June 2026

HR/FI Go-Live - Complete Phase 1

April 2026

Begin Phase 2: SIS/Reporting

2026 - 2028

SIS/Reporting activities

2026 - 2028

SIS/Reporting activities

2026 - 2028

SIS/Reporting activities

December 2028

SIS/Reporting Go-Live - Complete Phase 2

January 2029

Begin Phase 3: Critical Care

January 2029

Critical care activities

March 2029

Critical care activities

April 2029

Final operational adjustments/tuning

June 2029

Complete Phase 3

Why this is important

Northern Kentucky University currently uses the on-premises SAP ECC Business Suite with HANA databases for Human Capital Management (HCM), Financials (FI), Student Lifecycle Management (SLCM), our student information system, Sigma to support Student Financial Aid, and reporting and analytics using SAP's Business Warehouse (BW), Business Intelligence (BI), BOBJ and SQL databases.

SAP ECC is scheduled to become end-of-life in December 2030, with a reduction in support starting in January 2028. Many interfaced systems must also be considered, which will take time to plan for migrations.

Large scale projects such as ERP migrations take at least 2-3 years to fully complete, and NKU is committed to migrating all systems before the current system is no longer supported.

Modernization

Be an easy, value-added net promoter for all students — remote, hybrid, on-campus, or in an accelerated program. The student experience should be first-class, complete, comprehensive, and interactive.
Provide a feature-complete, integrated system that provides financial management, human capital management, payroll, student information and reporting capabilities
Provide a scalable and flexible Software as a Service (SaaS) cloud-based system that offers capabilities that can evolving with the University's operational needs

Access

Be easy to navigate and accomplish tasks for faculty, staff, and students alike
System interfaces should be instinctive to the user, and align processes to business outcomes efficiently in support of the student experience
Promote self-service and self-management of activities and transactions for faculty, staff, and students

Security

Demonstrate an ongoing commitment to security, scalability, and modernization
Be highly flexible for integrated data sharing, while also being granular and easy to maintain security and compliance with state and federal regulations
Provide first-class services to faculty, staff, and students while simultaneously keeping pace with the ever-changing security and device landscape

What Success Looks Like

There are three guiding principles that measure the success of this project:

Software/Process fit

The new ERP should serve all important, necessary needs to serve business, support, and academic processes for the University. The software should have flexibility/configuration to account for specialization necessary for operational support with minimal overhead (i.e. low-code/no-code is preferred over full application development to achieve the same outcome)

Technical/Architectural fit
The system and service that the ERP and reporting software runs upon must have the capability to interface/integrate well with existing and future University technology and infrastructure, preferring but not excluding minimal use of integration platforms.

Philosophical fit
The ERP system and implementation partners used to implement must be deeply familiar with the specialized and complex nature of higher education operations and how to efficiently and effectively meet the needs of the University’s functions with technology and partnership that both compliments and guides the implementation to successful and cost-effective completion. Pricing should reflect exactly what the proposed solutions/services provide without added/hidden cost or bolt-on product requirements not already accounted for in the proposal pricing, or not resident in the proposed products or services natively.

Questions?

If you have any questions/concerns, please contact us.