Butler Tech Shifts Student Information Management

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 06/01/10

Butler Technology and Career Development Schools in Ohio is overhauling its student data system and implementing a new portal solution to tie in with its LMS.

Butler Tech has licensed a set of software modules from Campus Management for use at two campuses to replace a legacy system. The organization serves 25,000 high school and postsecondary adult learners at 190 satellite sites serving 10 school districts. The applications will address the school's needs to manage records for full-time students, career development students, part-time career enhancement students, and students in corporate customized training.

"With the solution, we hope to eliminate many of the offline manual processes involved in managing our student records and transactions," said Calista Smith, supervisor of adult industry programs and process management. "We hope to eliminate many of the offline manual processes involved in managing our student records and transactions."

The Hamilton-based institution will be using CampusVue Student, which includes programs for admissions and recruiting, academic records, student accounts, financial aid, student services, contact management, and career services. The license signed by Butler Tech grants a maximum record count of 1,200 full-time equivalent students tallied by credit hours. The college will also be using CampusVue Portal, which provides online services for the campus community. It also will be using application programming interfaces to integrate the modules with CampusLink Merchant Express and its Angel learning management system. A contract posted to the school's Web site sets the price for a perpetual license at about $275,000.

Butler Tech has also signed a professional services agreement with Campus Management for just under $460,000, which includes implementation of the applications, integration work, and training. The school has signed a three-year annual maintenance contract for the software for about $58,000.

According to a document presented to the board of education that approved the capital expenditure, the other finalist vendor, Datatel, came in at about $60,000 more than the Campus Management solution. A third vendor that had responded to a Butler Tech request for proposal was eliminated because of incomplete documentation and "deficiencies in requirements."

The board approved the deal in January 2010, and the school said it hopes to have the new student information system operational by July 1, 2010.

Campus Management itself has also announced that it will be adding business intelligence and analytics technology from eThority to CampusVue.

The new CampusVue Performance Analytics system is intended to pull data from multiple sources--those from Campus Management as well as other applications--into a single dashboard for reporting purposes. The new module is a data warehouse with pre-built service functions for performing extraction, transformation, and load processes to extract data for real-time analysis.