While interest in the use of ERP-type products appears to be growing on college campuses, Lewis said that interest is often coupled with hesitation. He traces that to several reports about schools that have implemented ERP and not obtained the functionality or usability they had hoped for. Despite that, we are hearing from a lot of schools that are interested in our project. These various systems generally cannot talk to each other. But Woodfield also conceded that implementing an ERP system is not an easy task.
Enterprise systems are expensive and painful to implement.
They require a lot of rapid decision making, which is not a common characteristic of schools. The systems are also designed to be very transparent, allowing data to flow to everyone. Schools are not always open to that. The idea of what looks like centralized control of information is not something faculty in particular are going to support. He does, however, recommend that schools approach an ERP project carefully.