Software Acquisition Process

Once a campus or central has identified a need for a business application, the CIO shares the information with heads of the three IT divisions and/or with the IT Steering Committee, prior to determination of the software research group. The research group will evaluate and recommend a business application for use across all campuses. The research, evaluation and selection should take into account:

Research Group Criteria

1. Involve representatives from appropriate constituent groups (including ITA, Academic and Tech reps)
2. Involve personnel from each location (spread across constituent groups)
3. Make attempts to vary the research team membership over time.

Research Criteria

1. Is there a solution or an interface in place at any campuses already?
2. Is there a Datatel Solution/Datatel Partner solution available?
3. Are there alternative products/models for meeting these needs? Evaluate a broad sampling.

Evaluation Criteria

1. Spell out the purpose & functionality clearly
2. Is this product multi-campus friendly? Evaluate whether the functionality is rich enough and adaptable enough to meet requirements of all Antioch campuses, both now and in the foreseeable future.
3. How easy is the system to use? Ideally a system should be fairly intuitive and a WEB based system is easier and more flexible from an IT infrastructure perspective.
4. Compare the capital and operating costs of the system whether it is hosted by Antioch or hosted externally.
5. Determine the costs of switching to the new system for those users who are currently using another system.
6. How does it interface with Colleague? If not a Datatel solution, determine how easily the proposed system can be integrated with Datatel and other IT applications.
7. What is the maintenance cost AND the purchase price?
8. Who will do the setup/training/customizations, the vendor or local campus?

Selection Process

1. Research Group uses Guidelines for Evaluation in assessing and making recommendations
2. Research Group passes information to AIS subcommittee
3. AIS subcommittee makes recommendation to the IT Steering Committee
4. The recommendation should include the following:
   1. High level implementation plan with timelines.
   2. High level estimates of staffing required for the implementation and ongoing maintenance and support (both technical and department).
   3. High level plans for how existing users of other similar business applications should convert to the new system.
   4. Cost estimates for purchasing, implementing the application and maintenance cost.

Special Projects examples

1. Prospect management solution for Admissions
2. Retention alert (College)
3. Digital signatures (Seattle)