Higher Education
Navigating the ever-changing nature of IT and its value to the institution.
At a key juncture where many institutions are targeting more diverse populations of students while dealing with smaller budgets, our innovation and creativity coupled with core technology expertise bring unique and cost-effective solutions to campus.
You all came in here with the technical knowledge we needed, but I’m amazed at how quickly you understood and improved our business processes as well.Project Manager, Higher Education Institution
At M&S Consulting, we understand the ever-changing nature of IT and its value to the institution. Our experts bring over 20 years of Higher Education experience leading the development and implementation of university enterprise systems including Oracle eBusiness Suite, PeopleSoft, Ellucian Banner, and Blackboard Learning Management systems. In addition to ERP implementation, enhancement, and operational management, we bring a deep experience in core technologies to any Higher Education environment such as Fusion Middleware (SOA and Identity/Access Management, Business Intelligence, and Data Analytics).
A Sampling of Our Higher Education Clients
Survey Results for “COVID-19 Impacts on Higher Education”
Our survey results compile faculty responses on diverse issues related to higher education experience in the COVID-19 pandemic. While speaking to the challenges and frustrations of the abrupt transition to online delivery in Spring 2020, respondents also had many ideas about how they and their institutions could strengthen their students’ educational outcomes.
Our analysis of this data considers the challenges and critiques offered by our respondents but focuses on the constructive suggestions participants offered on how to move forward in a situation that continues to present many challenges.
Strategic Procure-to-Pay Assessment
Shrinking budgets and increasing operating costs are placing higher education procurement departments under increased pressure to both engage campus users as organizational partners and serve the institution as purchasing knowledge experts. In addition, procurement departments continue to be responsible for ensuring appropriate controls and compliance as well as enabling increased buying power across campus.
Implementing and Integrating These Great Technologies and More
Application Solutions and Integration
M&S Consulting’s team of enterprise architects and developers can provide seamless integration for many campus systems. Utilizing best practices and comprehensive middleware integration tools, we can integrate throughout the campus and into the cloud.
At West Virginia University, our team lead the effort to design & develop SOA based integrations of Payment and Vendor data to and from the State ERP system using a robust and advanced queuing and debatching concept for high volume batch interfaces. In addition, we utilized this same infrastructure to integrate Oracle eBusiness Suite HCM with cloud hosted Oracle Taleo recruiting portal while also designing and developing an Ellucian Banner to The Common Application integration.
Infrastructure and the Cloud
Moving to the cloud for any institution can be complicated and overwhelming. M&S Consulting brings the expertise and partnerships necessary to take even the most complex systems to the cloud, saving the institution on personnel and data center expenses.
At Harvard University Business Publishing, M&S drove the project to migrate their 150+ servers, including the ERP application, Oracle eBusiness Suite, to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud, thus allowing for the closure of their on-premises data center. In this classic “lift and shift” approach, the emphasis was first to move the servers to the cloud, providing immediate benefit to the institution. Subsequent phases will work within each application to begin taking advantage of many AWS platform services.
Security and Risk
With cyber attacks on the rise for higher education, M&S can help institutions reduce these risks through our expert knowledge of best practices in identity and access management (including two-factor authentication), enterprise architecture (including high availability, disaster recovery, and hardening to address third-party security assessment findings), HIPAA, FERPA, and PCIDSS.
I'm very impressed by your work ethic and attention to detail. That was a near impossible task to get right the first time, but you did.Director of Application Services, Public Land Grant Research University