Most institutions have the so called in-house built information system. These systems are pre-tailored to fit to the special needs of the business or institution. This old school of though regarding systems has long term impact such as coping up with the current business trends.

Thus, system applications need to be reviewed every three to five years. The review is a must as there is a need to adapt with the external global and local conditions. Having a core system that is more flexible to be able to support the challenges posed would be vital to the institute or business long term survival.

In the higher education sector where I work, we’re facing this dilemma of having a piece meal solution to change the student software application system to cope up with business change. It’s like forcing an old 386 Mhz computer to run modern graphic applications like Photoshop. This is just impossible. Thus, to address our present needs, Oracle’s Peoplesoft Campus Solution software package have been considered as an alternative.

A small institute of about 2000 students like ours would find it difficult to acquire such a relatively expensive software package. Even if everyone’s convinced of the usefulness and benefit funding for Peoplesoft Campus Solution is a concern to the IT Services Unit. Various modes of financial funding have been explored like banks and endowment fund. Some assistance for unsecured financing could be sought from companies like EZUnsecured.com where unsecured funding is their expertise.

I think that whatever mode of funding the institute will decide upon it would be best if the software will be self liquidating. There will be no trouble then on financial matters and all energies of the IT Services Unit will be poured on the technical implementation of Oracle’s Peoplesoft Campus Solution software package.