• November 18, 2020

    Dear BCCC Faculty and Staff:

    Great news! I am writing to update you on another major milestone for the College’s Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) transition.

    Earlier this month (November 4th), the College received approval from the Maryland Board of Public Works (the Governor of Maryland, the State’s Comptroller and the State’s Treasurer) to proceed with the acquisition and implementation of the Enterprise Resource Planning system. The prevailing solution is Banner by Ellucian.

    Banner is a leading ERP system in the higher education arena. Banner serves more than 2,700 colleges and universities nationwide and provides a suite of products and tools that comprehensively meet the needs of institutions of higher education. The College has adopted Banner to serve as our Student Information, Financial Management, Human Capital Management, Financial Aid, Customer Service Relationship Management and Portal Systems. Currently, the College’s systems, which include HPLAN, are disjointed, dated, and do not provide the level of efficiencies, security and productivity that we need to be effective; so, this comes as a welcomed departure.

    This is a major turning point for the College. Not only does it directly address the College’s Realignment Task #9; it is the catalyst for the cohesive and collaborative spirit that will underpin the success of the College meeting the needs of our students. This development comes after a series of events that took place after the College submitted the Request for Proposal (RFP) on April 8, 2020. A pre-proposal conference was held where 11 vendors attended; and then, ultimately, two proposals were provided to the College. There was a cross-institutional evaluation committee assembled to review the proposals that were provided to the College, and the proposals were evaluated based on their ability to meet the College’s requirements as well as the financial estimates provided. The team, consisting of representation from IT, Finance and Administration, Institutional Research, Academic Affairs and Student Affairs, unanimously made the decision to recommend Banner. We thank them.

    We celebrate this milestone, particularly as it is the first time that the College has been able to reach this point after several attempts. However, the work for the College is just beginning. In the coming weeks, we will be meeting with Ellucian to begin developing an implementation schedule and we will begin assembling small groups to assist with the implementation. While some of you may not be directly involved with the day-to-day activities in the implementation project, each functional area was, and will continue to be represented through this process. This is an enterprise-wide application so its reach will be deep and wide and will affect many processes and procedures across the College.

    As promised, we will continue to keep the BCCC community engaged and informed about the progress of the transition. Thank you for your continued support!

    Debra L. McCurdy, PhD

    President