Administrative Systems and Ted Simpson

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                         Contact: Ted Simpson

March 7, 2007                                                                                                                       410-225-2531

                                                                                                                     pr@mica.edu

I just read a the latest HEUG newsletter and there were some dates put out in December that a number of institutions (mine included) have been eagerly awaiting:

John Wookey, Oracle Senior VP for Applications, and Susan Beidler, Director, Strategy for Campus Solutions, announced at the December HEUG Board meeting that the Campus Solutions / HR 9.0 product release date is December 15, 2006.  The upgrade scripts will be available in Q1 2007 supporting both the 8.0 to 9.0 and 8.0 to 8.9 migration paths.
You can read the whole article here, but you will need a HEUG login -- so join HEUG if you haven't already!  We already have our CS 9.0 cds and plan to have a demo instance up next month.  We are really looking forward to those upgrade scripts.

Also of note is a comment about the next version of PeopleSoft:


Oracle is still looking for input and specific requirements from Higher Ed for PeopleSoft HRMS version 9.X (which is the PeopleSoft version coming after 9.0).

As I start to bounce some ideas around about how administrative systems (student systems, financial systems, etc.) are integrated into web redesign schemata for a conference paper due . . . soon (!), I am starting to see a trend.  I currently sit on a committee that is reviewing web redesign proposals and this question of administrative integration has come up in each proposal.

I am struck by how many web vendors define "integration" very differently than I do.  It would seem that web designers (and this was confirmed during a very good conference I attended last summer) are very concerned with making a site sticky and functional (both very good things) but maybe not as concerned with some of the less sticky but no less important tasks that users perform (e.g. generating a purchase order -- not fun).  My argument is that integration is not a series of touch points that port users to different places, but, rather, a true blending of the web experience and the (admittedly dull) tasks that administrative users perform.