The Challenge – School District Modernization
Across the United States, school districts are struggling with outdated administrative systems. These systems are no longer able to meet the needs of school districts. Many districts fall behind in terms of school district modernization and efficiency.
Guilford County Schools is one district that is taking action to address this issue of modernizing their school business administration. The leadership team identified the need to participate in the statewide modernization program. This program would update their outdated HCM (Human Capital Management), Financial, and Supply Chain solutions.
Despite several attempts to fill gaps in their solution matrix, eventually, replacements were required in order to modernize their process.
The modernization program will provide Guilford County Schools with updated versions of the applications that they currently use. It will also provide new applications that will help them to become more efficient and modernize their operations. This will ultimately benefit the students, staff, and taxpayers in the district.
About the School District
Guilford County Schools is a public school system in Greensboro and High Point, North Carolina. The District has 126 schools under its jurisdiction which oversees 70,000 students and 9,800 employees. These numbers placed Guilford County as the third-largest school district in North Carolina and 50th in the United States.
The Guilford County School District Human Resources, Finance, and Operations Team provide full operations support to internal and external customers. This included HCM, Finance, Supply Chain, Payroll, and Educational support which is an essential component of the District’s educational mission.
“We are dedicated to providing a safe, positive, and nurturing learning environment where students can achieve their full academic, social and personal potential to become contributing members of society.”
Our Guidance
DavenportLawrence’s approach is to engage team members with extensive experience in a range of simple to complex implementation environments that have had the opportunity to learn the methodology and gain deep experience with some of the world’s most respected software consulting organizations such as; Accenture, PWC, and IBM. Our team then leverages this in-depth knowledge and additional experiences gained with DavenportLawrence to represent our clients’ interest in engagement with software vendors and integrators during their modernization projects. The goal is to help take the mystery out of these complex transformations and ensure the client is receiving the value they expect in this significant investment. Our team members have all worked successfully on integrator teams and now bring this skill set to represent the client teams to support a smooth and effective process for all parties.
Assessment & Selection
Guilford County School District valued DavenportLawrence’s dedication and team experiences enabling the team to clearly understand and document their District processes, business requirements, integration requirements, issues & opportunities, and leadership expectations while supporting their complex assessment and vendor selection process. This process served as a useful tool to understand their District’s solution needs, including what has worked well on like GCS projects in the past and what has not worked well on like GCS projects in the past and begin to understand what to expect in a successful transition early in the process. These activities ultimately helped to support the District in selecting the best fit software solution to invest in as well as position expectations with the representative vendor from Day 1.
The firm conducted a full assessment of:
- All Operational Related Functions
- HCM, Finance, Facilities and Supply Chain
- Documented requirements in these functions
- Documented process flows in these functions
- Inventory of report utilization
- All operational software being utilized by the District by department
- Software utilization by the District resulting in a detailed map of current software use including custom applications
- Expected software to be replaced during the modernization project
- Expected software integrations to be developed during the modernization project
- Evaluation of training and change management expectations and needs
Leading to:
- Ultimate evaluation and selection of a solution vendor based on these factors
The selection process was critical for the Guilford County School District in addressing the goal of modernizing its systems for many operations.
The Results
With the help of DavenportLawrence, Guilford County Schools District was able to:
- Determine the gaps between the present state and a desired future state of operations
- Determine which (ERP) Enterprise Resource Planning solution would be most beneficial in modernization operations based on a clear understanding of business requirements of software utilization needs by department
- Position to mitigate their risk with a detailed SOW (Statement of Work) driven by these details captured during the assessment
- Leverage DavenportLawrence’s experience of guiding many organizations through ERP selection and implementation to select the best fit of the options available
The new solution will deliver significant benefits to the district in terms of improved efficiency, reduced processing time, optimized workflows, and improved information availability. In addition, the new system will help to standardize business practices across central departments and all 126 schools, providing the foundation for further modernization initiatives.
The Implementation
DavenportLawrence is continuing the journey with Guilford County Schools as trusted advisors in the execution of the following roles:
- Project Management
- Organizational Change Management
- Functional support via deeply experienced SME (Subject Matter Experts) representing all major business functions
- Testing Support
- Training Support
DavenportLawrence has invested the time with many districts gaining an in-depth understanding of what an ERP solution should deliver in your industry to support this process successfully. Our extensive understanding of the software implementation process (what to expect) coupled with this unique industry knowledge (how K-12 operations function) has helped our team become a trusted advisor and support the District in avoiding many of the pitfalls that take place during these complex transformation projects.
Why not contact us today to see how we can help you in your modernization journey?