4-page Case Study - Posted 5/29/2007

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Saskatchewan Learning

Saskatchewan School Boards Score Top Marks in Efficiency with New Financial Management System

Business Challenge

In December 2000, Saskatchewan Learning created the Saskatchewan Education Technology Consortium (ETC) – a partnership between all major educational institutions in the province’s K-12 sector. The initiative aimed to develop a vision for e-learning, expand e-learning resources, support and improve e-business requirements, and provide professional development opportunities for all school division staff.
The ETC decided to take the funding that goes out to school divisions and spend a small portion of it on their behalf to improve operational efficiency across the board. “Our goal was to get savings on the business side and redirect those funds and resources to the classroom,” says Roy Chursinoff, Director, Education Technology Consortium, Saskatchewan Learning. “Ultimately, e-business would make room for e-learning.”

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We can basically cover the entire province with fewer than 300 licenses. We’re expecting to save around $300,000 a year in annual licensing and maintenance with Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV. Director, Education Technology Consortium, Saskatchewan Learning

“We knew many of the smaller systems being used wouldn’t work in a larger school division since they lacked proper HR or payroll. Some schools did their books on spreadsheets, while others used Oracle. We saw quite a cross section,” says Dr, Donald Lloyd, Superintendent of Administrative Services, Greater Saskatoon Catholic Schools Chief Financial Officer, Saskatoon Catholic, one of the school divisions that pilot-tested the solution. “We wanted one common solution to serve the needs of all school divisions.”

Without a common financial management system in place, Saskatchewan Learning had no easy way to assemble data and reports, or share information across the 82 school divisions. The ETC decided it was time to remove these barriers which hindered cross-division collaboration by standardizing on a common financial management system.

Solution

In the spring of 2004, the ETC’s E-Business Committee initiated an RFP process to find the right service provider. After reviewing a number of submissions, the committee chose to work with Gold Certified Microsoft® Business Solutions Partner Open Door Technology, and deploy the company’s Education Suite. Based on Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV, the Education Suite offers Saskatchewan K-12 school boards a fully integrated human resources, financials and payroll solution.

“At the time, there was no midmarket software for school divisions. Solutions were either very small or very large,” says Lloyd. “But we couldn’t spend tens of millions of dollars on solutions like Oracle or SAP. We needed an affordable solution that worked in an education setting. That’s why Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV fits in so nicely for what we need.”

Soon after the decision had been made, the project scope changed. That fall, the provincial government mandated the amalgamation of the 82 small school divisions into 28 larger bodies. The changes were slotted to take effect on January 1, 2006.

The ETC solicited support from the ETC’s board of directors and Saskatchewan Learning to do a capital cost purchase on behalf of all school divisions, and purchase user licenses for conducting pilot projects to test the solution. The committee selected two school divisions for the pilot project from those already eager to implement the Education Suite: Saskatoon Catholic, a large urban division; and Saskatchewan Valley, a rural school division that would be amalgamating with other rural school divisions with different systems. The pilots commenced January 1, 2005.

“The intent of these pilots was to verify the Education Suite with Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV would match the functionality of the existing systems, and provides the additional functionality they were lacking such as HR and payroll,” says Chursinoff.

Over the next year, Open Door Technology deployed HR, payroll, accounts payable, accounts receivable and general ledger components of the Education Suite to the pilot divisions. Open Door Technology also installed an Employee Portal, a feature of Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV that integrates the software with SharePoint® Portal Server 2003. The goal of the Employee Portal was to give staff members a self-serve option for finding information about payroll, vacation time, scheduling, and contacts. As well, Microsoft .NET portals were used to develop a financial manager budget portal and an advanced HR portal.
“The budget portal allows school principals and superintendents to analyze their budget information in real time. They can review purchase orders, costs, and even original invoices,” says Malcolm Roach, President, Open Door Technology. “In addition, the self-serve HR portal allows staff to access their own employment history or payroll information online. This has helped save a significant amount of administration time.”

Business Benefits

Open Door Technology facilitated a rapid, seamless deployment of the Education Suite, based on Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV at 13 school divisions by January 2006. As the Education Suite is rolled out across the province, Saskatchewan Learning sees major gains on the horizon. In fact, the Education Technology Consortium has been so pleased it has committed $200,000 a year for enhancements to the solution.

An A+ for better licensing
In 2003, Saskatoon Learning had 82 divisions. The amalgamation raised questions about the number of user licenses Saskatchewan Learning would actually need. The ETC reasoned it would need around 350 for the province, with 10 to 20 users in each division.

At the time, the ETC estimated that with the exception of one large urban division, school divisions spent around $500,000 a year in annual licensing and maintenance, excluding regular upgrades to the product. Following the pilot projects, however, the committee discovered remote users did not require a license for the Web portal.

“Initially, we thought a rural division, for example, would require about 10 user licenses. But since remote users do not need a user license, we can get away with as little as six or eight,” says Chursinoff. “In our opinion, other systems we reviewed were much more expensive in comparison to Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV. For example with Oracle, a school division with 2,000 employees would need 2,000 licenses – even remote users. We simply could not afford it.”

The ETC purchased 220 Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV licenses after estimating that 14 school boards would voluntarily implement the system. Even though 18 divisions came on board to date, the ETC still had 20 or 30 licenses left over.

“We can basically cover the entire province with fewer than 300 licenses,” says Chursinoff. “We’re expecting to save around $300,000 a year in annual licensing and maintenance with Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV.”

Top marks for time savings
Previously, school divisions printed out budget reports and mailed them to each of their schools for their review. Until school principals received the reports, they had no idea of their actual budget commitments. By the time schools received the reports, the information was already a month or two late.

With the new Employee Portal in place, school principals have access to a secure, live listing of their expenditures and budgets. Principals can check the Web portal for outstanding invoices or purchase orders, and verify their available funds. Since everything is posted to the budget portal in real time, all records are current as the last investment.
“We first realized the benefits at Saskatoon Catholic, which has over 50 schools. With the Web Portal, school principals no longer need to print out reports, verify that schools received them or answer any follow-up inquiries,” says Chursinoff. “The Web portal alone has probably helped that school division free up time for two people.”

Standardized reporting makes the grade
When the provincial government announced its school division amalgamation plans, it meant as many as seven divisions would come together, each with different personnel, accounting practices and systems. Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV enabled Open Door Technology to embed a Standard Chart of Accounts directly into the Education Suite, which has helped Saskatchewan Learning cope with the amalgamation by streamlining the way all school divisions do business.
“Previously, each division used its own Chart of Accounts which made it impossible to compare expenditures – it was like comparing apples, oranges and peanuts,” says Chursinoff. “All school divisions now use the same Chart of Accounts, which means we can actually draw budget comparisons across the province.”

Working smarter with the self-service portal
Payroll in school divisions tends to be complicated. For example, a teacher might work in four different roles in a week. She might perform noon-hour supervision one day, teach Special Education students another, and teach Geography and Math the rest of the week. Each role might command different pay, vacation, or pension rates. To complicate matters further, many of the larger systems do not have the flexibility to manage these rates without some manual intervention.
With Microsoft Dynamics™ NAV, the Education Suite is designed to handle these complications. In fact, the Web portal feature has helped to empower employees and save administration time. Staff members now use the portal to apply for competitions, review their pay stubs and employment history, check for vacation days, edit their personal and contact information, and send updates to HR. Since the HR system integrates with Microsoft Office, Secretary Treasurers can transfer employee information into a Microsoft Excel® spreadsheet and conduct standard reporting.
“The Employee Portal is one of the most powerful pieces of this whole project,” says Lloyd. “With the portal, employees can enter their timesheets just as they would enter e-mail, and away they go.”

Software and Services
  Microsoft Dynamics NAV 
  .NET Framework
  SharePoint Portal Server 2003

Microsoft Dynamics
Microsoft Dynamics (formerly Microsoft Business Solutions) is a line of integrated, adaptable business management solutions that enables you and your people to make business decisions with greater confidence. Microsoft Dynamics works like and with familiar Microsoft software to help your people be more productive.
For more information about Microsoft Dynamics, go to: http://www.microsoft.com/canada/dynamics/default.mspx

For More Information
For more information about Microsoft products and services, call the Microsoft Sales Information Center at (800) 426-9400. In Canada, call the Microsoft Canada Information Centre at (877) 568-2495. Customers who are deaf or hard-of-hearing can reach Microsoft text telephone (TTY/TDD) services at (800) 892-5234 in the United States or (905) 568-9641 in Canada. Outside the 50 United States and Canada, please contact your local Microsoft subsidiary. To access information using the World Wide Web, go to: http://www.microsoft.com/

For more information about Open Door Technology, Inc. products and services, call 1-877-777-7764 or visit the Web site at: http://www.opendoor.ca/

For more information about Saskatchewan Learning products and services, call 306-787-5609 or visit the Web site at: http://www.sasked.gov.sk.ca/