Sharda University integrated its academic, finance and administrative functions on to a common platform. The institution is now geared up to build applications on the same in order to enhance its capabilities. By Heena Jhingan
Back in 1995, when Sharda University, a venture of the SGI group, started its operations in higher education, it was largely dependent on a basic ERP system that was fit for a mid-sized college. However, as the institution began to grow into a multi-campus environment, the limitations of the ERP solution were uncovered.
By this time, the institution was recruiting teachers and enrolling students from across the world. In this scenario, it could no longer continue to get by with multiple Excel sheets and unreliable software solutions that could collapse anytime. For this reason, it decided to implement Oracle’s PeopleSoft Solution and integrate its academic, financial and administrative functions to keep track of a student’s lifecycle process.
Mudit Consul, Executive Vice President, Sharda Group, said that they were on the lookout for a University Management System that was capable of bringing the six campuses—including the ones at Agra, Mathura and Noida—on to a common platform. The solution was required to be integrated end-to-end and client-focused.
“The client, for an institution like ours, is the student community. While an ERP system can fit the needs of an enterprise, a more diligent and comprehensive solution is required to meet the needs of the education sector, one that can manage both academic and administrative domains of the institution,” he reasoned.
The first phase of the deployment, which included the Admission management, the Supply Chain management and the Financial Supply Chain modules, is up and running. The admissions for the current academic year will be powered by the new technology.
The admission module, he explained, enables the institute to automate the admission process and provide an applicant with complete visibility around the status of his application including the availability of seats for the course that he is interested in. Once an applicant enrolls into a course, the department heads can have detailed information about each student.
Explaining how the solution could be instrumental in tracking a student’s lifecycle at the institute, Consul said that, going forward, the institution planned to issue smartcards to the students for marking attendance, the library, making payments at the canteen and other purposes. This will be integrated into the Oracle PeopleSoft backbone. The platform is also capable of managing alumni records and will help capture the overall lifecycle of the student.
Going with Oracle PeopleSoft, an established solution that had already been deployed by renowned universities, was not a tough choice to make for Sharda University. “We evaluated some popular options, and some Cloud-based solutions as well, but considering the multi-campus and multi-currency environment that we would be operating in, we needed a robust and secure platform,” Consul said.
The overall solution architecture will include Human Capital Management, Evaluation and Appraisal Systems, which will be added to the system in the second phase that is likely to be undertaken earlier next year.
Apart from these modules, the institution plans to build specialized applications to provide for its needs. It also offers medical courses and runs a hospital on the premises. It plans to develop a hospital management application. Another key initiative that the institution plans is the development of learning management applications with collaborative tools. It intends to use open source platforms for this purpose, so that there can be a smooth exchange of information between the students and the faculty. For, this, the University is going to take help of its implementation partner, HCL Technologies.
“We do have an IT team, but since these architectures are complex, the better approach for application development will be to take the help of experts,” asserted Consul.
The solution is flexible and scales as per need. “The model is such that we have to pay for a one time implementation and customization and then as the need to scale arises, we will need to make investments on the hardware that we will have to plug in at that point of time,” he said.
Although the implementation was not a challenge, there were some hiccups, especially pertaining to integration with other systems. “While we were testing the new solution with Aptech, our partner for online assessment for the admission process, we experienced some difficulties in integrating with their system. These were largely due to their unfamiliarity with the new system. These minor issues can easily be eliminated as even the smaller partners are willing to upgrade their skills in order to adapt to new environments,” he said.
He concluded saying that they might be exposed to fresh challenges once they prepare to implement the smartcards based on either RFID or biometric technology as then they would need to work with specialized vendors and multiple technologies and such ecosystems had a tendency to become quite complex.
