Business & Administrative | News

Pennsylvania Districts Choose Skyward Finance/HR Suite

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 10/31/12

Three school districts in a Pennsylvania county have decided to adopt a business software suite from Skyward. Upper Merion Area School District, Colonial School District, and Central Montco Technical High School will be using Skyward School Business Suite, which has multiple modules and a common database, including accounting, budget and substitute management, human resources, and insurance and purchase order tracking, among other functions. With those schools added, the company has 41 districts in the state using its software.

Steve Skrocki, business administrator for Upper Merion Area School District, said his district will be using the financial modules of the software to increase efficiencies in everyday business operations. "Our main objective in conducting the search was to identify a product that we felt could enhance internal efficiencies by a tremendous amount. And that’s what we’ve received with Skyward," he said.

"Having a streamlined, electronic approval process will certainly cut down internal costs," Skrocki added. "Staff can now do more important things than pushing around papers. Through Skyward, we are really looking forward to increased accessibility of information, and being more transparent with our community when it comes to financial information."

The district is spending $270,965 for five years of use of the software, including migration of data, consulting, training, system hosting, and support and maintenance. The current system in use at the district is 25 years old and is no longer supported by its vendor, Tenex (now Harris School Solutions), the district said in the minutes of a finance committee meeting. The search for a replacement has been going on since 2010. The implementation is expected to go live on January 1, 2013.

Noted Trevor Jackson, business administrator for Colonial School District, "Our district will benefit from the efficiency in retrieving and analyzing data. Skyward provides the ability to easily drill down data, and is also extremely easy to navigate."

According to a statement from Skyward, the three districts sought to choose software from the same company in order to exchange best practices on implementation and use.