For Bill Witsman, it is time to celebrate.

Today marks the three-year deadline for the completion of the Enterprise Information System Enhancement project. The EISE project has two parts: Banner and a Degree Auditing System.

The university chose the three-year deadline partly because of their contract with SunGard Higher Education, the company that owns Banner. The contract allowed Eastern to use SunGard’s consulting services for three years.

Now that the major components of Banner are implemented, Witsman, EISE project director, said he feels relaxed.

“Probably the most tense times were right before you do something that’s significantly going to change the way you do business and if it doesn’t work, things are really going to be bad,” he said. “I’m not going to be planning a party, but I’m sure someone will!”

However, Witsman said today’s deadline does not mean work is done with Banner.

The university is in the process of doing a project implementation assessment, Witsman said.

“We’re looking back and seeing what have we done using Banner? What are the things we have changed? And what are the things that we yet could do to be more efficient and give better customer service?” Witsman said.

Witsman said the university wants to do two things now that Banner is implemented: Create a Web portal and implement additional software.

“The portal would tie things together a little bit better,” Witsman said. “On one screen on the Web, it gives you the capability to get into your e-mail, to look at your registration, your grades, financial aid status. It’s all kind of packaged in one screen.”

The portal would also allow the university to target students based on their status at Eastern.

Before coming to Eastern in the fall, freshmen would have a package of information that would make them feel more prepared for the transition into college. Witsman said this page might include tips on what to bring to school, events happening during the first week and information about move-in day.

The new software the university hopes to add is called Workflow. Witsman said the new program would allow offices to communicate with one another more efficiently.

While a feeling of relief comes with today, Witsman said working out the problems with Banner along the way has been difficult at times.

Witsman said over the past few years Eastern has made several changes as to the way things are graded and how grade point averages are calculated. Since 1992, there have been over 400 grade rule changes.

Before students had access to Banner, programmers had to figure out how to get the system to work with the way Eastern calculates grades. After this was done, Witsman said the system was tested before students were able to use it.

So far, there has only been one minor problem with Banner’s student module. Students who took courses during or before Summer 2007 and repeated them in the fall had inaccurate GPAs reported on PAWS when grades for the fall semester were posted.

While there have been a few minor problems with Banner, the university has worked to correct them quickly, Christie Roszkowski, council on academic affairs chair, said. She said the implementation process has been a learning experience for everyone, but sometimes it can be hard to discover the cause of the problem.

“It’s just totally unclear at this point what’s a limitation of the system and what’s part of the learning curve,” Roszkowski said.

Registrar Sue Harvey said testing has been done since the problem with repeat courses occurred and said she does not anticipate the same type of problem in the future.

Linda Holloway, assistant director for payroll and benefits, said while Banner has increased efficiency on campus, there are some tasks the new system has not made any easier.

“Like most software, reporting is weak,” she said. “Because of the flexibility of the Banner setup, it would be very difficult for a company to include standard reports that work for all schools.”

Holloway said if a reporting system could be developed that is as user definable as the rest of Banner, administrative reporting would be easier.

However, improvements like these may not be far off in Banner’s future.

“My understanding is that many of the things that we want it to do, it’s capable of it but

we’re just not there yet,” Roszkowski said. “You can’t do everything at once.”

Barbara Harrington can be reached at 581-7942 or bjharrington@eiu.edu.

Eastern Illinois banner system. (Screen shot / The Daily Eastern News)

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