Ellucian

Ellucian is a software, analytics, insights and services provider that has been helping higher education institutions achieve student success for more than 40 years.
Today, the company serves 2,400 institutions and 18 million students in 40 countries around the world.

About the Project

With a number of strategic initiatives targeted for the fiscal year, Ellucian needed to complete the implementation on a strict timeline, with no business disruptions or change orders. The company also wanted its “super-users,” finance planning and accounting employees who create reports on a regular basis, to hit the ground running on the new system.

NTT DATA Business Solutions worked closely with Ellucian’s business and technical project leads to host multiple knowledgetransfer sessions to ensure super-users were trained to immediately start generating reports on the new system.

Together, the NTT DATA Business Solutions and Ellucian teams collaborated to add a two-dimensional configuration in the HR module, providing more streamlined security and easier reporting. After implementation Ellucian also gained the ability to add new employees to BPC at any time, rather than just once per month. BPC 10 also enabled automated ECC to BPC imports. This automation changed the data integration process from a manual, three-times-per-day event to a one-time scheduling event, eliminating human error and providing more timely financial information during the month-end close period.

In total the project clocked in at 16 weeks, including extensive knowledge transfer support, and came in under budget. After the implementation, NTT DATA Business Solutions provided follow-up knowledge transfer sessions for install, post-install and maintenance processes. “NTT DATA Business Solutions not only got the system compliant and operational, the team enabled us to take ownership of the future of BPC operations and become more self-sufficient thanks to a strong knowledge transfer element,” said Forsyth.

Today at Ellucian, 250 users enjoy the benefits of an upgraded BPC system. The company’s BPC solutions are now more in line with core SAP architecture and framework, preparing them for the future while also positioning Ellucian for a successful transition to SAP HANA down the road.