Nearly 500 CWRU faculty, staff and students attended and evaluated demonstrations from the two companies being considered for the University-wide Integrated Information System (UWIN2).

The vendors each gave four-day presentations during campus-wide forums in Thwing Center. PeopleSoft conducted demonstrations in November, while SCT showcased its software in December.

"We were extremely pleased with the participation from faculty, staff and students across campus," said Bob Jefferis, UWIN2 project director.

"Input from the CWRU community is very important to the vendor selection process and essential for a successful system."

CWRU plans for UWIN2, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software, to support a campus-wide database that will improve services for faculty, staff, students, and other constituents associated with the university.

Jefferis said the vendor presentations revealed both benefits and disadvantages to each company's software and services. For example, SCT serves only the higher education market, while PeopleSoft also deals with businesses as well as colleges and universities. A higher education focus could be of benefit as far as attention and specialization, but businesses often develop new technology first, according to Jefferis.

"Depending on perspective, one or the other may be more valuable," he said. "That is just one example of why campus input is so vital."

Those that attended the campus forums completed evaluations of each software company, which will be used by committees in the different data areas-student administration, financial, research and payroll-to form recommendations for the UWIN2 Planning Committee.

The planning committee will receive a separate technical recommendation and use it, along with the campus forum feedback, to recommend a company to serve as the primary ERP contractor. Additional gap vendors may be necessary.

Before making a final recommendation, committee members will visit universities where each company's system is already in place in order to assess the software and services in use.

The University expects to select a vendor in February, with implementation of the software scheduled to begin at the start of the next fiscal year. Additional planning and software selection will be done following the selection of the ERP vendor.

For more information on the company presentations or the project in general, go to the new UWIN2 Web site at http://uwin2.asmgi.com. Open forums are held the second Thursday of every month. The next UWIN2 brown bag information session will be noon February 13 in 13 Crawford Hall.