ConnectCarolina: Enterprise Resource Planning

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and NC State University will save money and improve efficiency by partnering on the human resources and finance components of their enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems.

Both campuses use Oracle’s PeopleSoft software for their ERP systems – major administrative systems for student services, human resources, payroll and financial. The partnership will focus on the human resources and financial systems. NC State has used PeopleSoft for these functions for a decade and is upgrading to the latest version. UNC-Chapel Hill plans to use those PeopleSoft components.

That timing means information technology offices on both campuses can learn from each other while avoiding duplicating efforts or investments while enhancing services for faculty and staff. The partnership aims to tap the most effective and efficient mix of sharing hardware, software, resources, business operations and vendor contracts to improve effectiveness and reduce costs for both universities. Both campuses are investing equal resources – equipment and staffing. 2013 is the target date for both campuses to be up and running with the new systems.

Undergraduate Admissions
The early admission deadline of November 2 saw the Undergraduate Admissions office receiving more than 12,100 applications (slightly above last year’s number) using the new online application developed by ConnectCarolina. The Admissions team continues to focus on production support and issue resolution, assisting the Undergraduate Admissions office as issues arise.

Graduate Admissions
Interfaces to PeopleSoft from national application systems for the Schools of Medicine, Dentistry, Law, Pharmacy and Physical Therapy have been migrated to PeopleSoft production. Meanwhile, the team continues to gather and review requirements for Graduate and Professional Schools admissions application and application evaluation pieces. Graduate admissions goes live in summer 2010.

Financial Aid
The team is focusing on finishing all configuration and conducting scenario and integration testing. Work also continues with the Financial Aid office to complete the testing of Carolina Covenant.

Student Records
On Nov. 4, a go-live took place for converted data relating to program/plan, PeopleSoft speak for majors and minors. This converted data brings over from legacy systems all academic program and degree records in SIS back to 1953, including more than 1.4 million rows of data, almost 350,000 students and more than 250,000 awarded degrees. This is needed in order for transcripts to be generated out of PeopleSoft beginning in Oct. 2010. It is also step two of four needed in preparation for registration for the fall 2010 term, which will take place in PeopleSoft in spring 2010 (step one was the course catalog go-live in September).

A major effort is the validation of Schedule of Classes and Enrollment Conversion data that will occur from now through mid-December (steps three and four). In parallel, the team will be performing integration testing for the February release.

Academic Advisement
A very large effort is completing the configuration of all the majors which will continue through November. Discussions will be held over the next couple weeks to determine how best to handle double majors in the system. This is an important area, and the pros and cons of all approaches will be discussed before making a decision.

Student Financials
The team is focused on review and testing of tuition calculation and group assignments. Testing of the Starlight system, which will replace the StARS system for tracking student awards, continues for the next several weeks. Another focus is the interface to General Ledger, which has been created and is ready for functional testing.

A major effort is determining the requirements for third party proxy functionality, which allows students to give parents and other authorized individuals the ability to act for a student for such activities as bill payment and review of selected information identified by the student. Decisions and coordination among portal, Identity Management and ConnectCarolina are on-going.

A Reporting section has been added to the ConnectCarolina Web site. This section outlines report types and tools as well as how reporting needs may be requested. A reporting section will also be added to the FAQ. To reach the reporting team with any questions, simply email This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it .

The Daily Tar Heel has acknowledged the accomplishments of the ConnectCarolina project in an editorial praising ITS improvements in technology. The editorial notes:

ConnectCarolina has been successful thus far in bringing much-needed change to student digital services.The new admissions Web site is up and running and greatly improved. The new campus directory also received a face lift to its user interface that makes searching it easier.

The real prize will come next semester when students register.As part of ConnectCarolina, students will be registering with a new and much improved interface. Instead of the arduous way we register now, students will virtually shop for classes. They will be able to place classes in a shopping cart that will keep track of classes they’re wait-listed for.

Plus, the University will be updating its information management technology with ConnectCarolina. This probably won’t be as visible a change to students, but it should help the University increase efficiency.