Instead, WorkDay has been a failure that cost ECC over $12 million in the last five years, ECC President David Balkin said. Balkin discovered the losses upon inheriting the problem when he came aboard early this year.
Balkin has been working all summer on a solution that will mean investing more money in a proven system, rather than investing more money in WorkDay.
On Tuesday, ECC's Board of Trustees approved spending $5.2 million to migrate to the Banner planning system used by 48 of the state's 64 SUNY campuses.
Balkin will meet with the Legislature's Community Engagement Committee on Sept. 15 to request $3 million in capital funding from Erie County to help cover the cost of contracting with two vendors to implement Banner.
If the county approves the funding, Balkin said ECC could apply for another $3 million in state matching funds for the project. ECC trustees unanimously approved resolutions to pursue five-year contracts with Ellucian, the owner of Banner, and computer consultant Stratus Information Group (SIG), for $2.3 million and $2.8 million, respectively.
Balkin said SIG is an existing SUNY vendor that has worked with SUNY's IT support organizations, SUNY Buffalo State College's Information Technology Exchange Center (ITEC) and SUNY Oneonta's Student Information and Campus Administrative Systems (SICAS).
He said migrating to Banner as quickly as possible will allow ECC to access the same forms, formats and data used by the other SUNY campuses, rather than duplicate work that's already been done by other schools.
The WorkDay fail was news to county legislators when Balkin broke it to them during the county budget process in June. Several have said they trust Balkin's take on the fix, but will be keeping close tabs on the process.
"The legislature and the county executive are well aware of the critical nature of this implementation," Balkin told ECC trustees Tuesday.
"Part of the reason we are pushing for this to happen sooner than later is so that we can be on the Banner system and have our people trained on it by this time next year," he added. "If we don't, we would be forced to stay on WorkDay for an additional year."
He said the $180-per-hour "pay as you go" cost to continue with WorkDay is unaffordable, especially as it does not meet the college's student services and administrative planning needs. ECC is the only SUNY campus that bought in on WorkDay, a corporate planning tool that was newly adapted for higher education at the time.
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