If you have realized that a no budget SIS project means that your schools goals will not be achieved that project quality and time will suffer. You've come to the right place.
So what do you do if you have a smaller SIS Budget and want to still realize many of the benefits of a SIS project.
In the last article I briefly touched on how industry experts have advised schools to budget $1000/student on large SIS projects. In some cases this number might be higher and some lower. So how can we make that number smaller, keep the budget heathier while doing a SIS implementation that will still achieve most of the benefits?
Lets look at the different areas from the previous article to see what we can do in different areas.
Systems (Previously listed as roughly 35% of the total budget)
Limiting your scope and reducing other systems will lower costs. It will also reduce implementation expenses and resource requirements. However, this approach means missing some benefits and potentially losing sight of the bigger picture and long-term goals.
To mitigate issues with a reduced scope, hire a consultant for a limited time to document the current and future environments and note potential areas for expansion.
Negotiating aspects like contract length, maximum increases in SIS, and system costs based on your implementation strategy can also impact your budget.
Sticking with systems used by other schools or software with supported integrations is another way to save costs. Be cautious of SIS providers claiming to have open APIs. When aiming to cut costs, prioritize discussing existing integrations over potential ones.
Project Resources (Previously listed as roughly 35% of the total budget)
Schools often try to cut costs by directly hiring project resources and then integrating them into a BAU environment. However, this may not deliver the desired value. What can be done instead?
Consider hiring a consultant directly for a set period. I've been hired by schools twice for SIS projects. This arrangement meant I didn't need to invoice the school, my super and payroll tax were managed, I benefited from salary sacrifice, and I had access to software licensing. For schools, it resulted in a lower hourly rate, less paperwork, known costs, and improved relationships from the start.
For large schools needing multiple resources, hiring many consultants directly may be impractical. However, exploring cost-reduction options might reveal unexpected solutions.
You may be able to handle early project stages yourself, such as stakeholder consultation, initial change management, and budgeting. However,trying to save by avoiding help with SIS selection may be a false economy, as mistakes in this area are common.
Another way to reduce costs is to roll out a SIS module by module. This minimizes the time paying for multiple products and shortens the time to go live. However, this approach can result in partial system deployments, leading to double data entry, incomplete solutions, and potential greater longer-term costs.
Data Migration (Previously listed as roughly 10% of the total budget)
With data migration, the amount of data you transfer directly affects costs. Bringing over minimal data and setting a low baseline, such as "it can't be worse than the previous system," can reduce expenses.
However, setting a low bar might mean missing an opportunity to clean up your data. While poor data quality has persisted, it's worth considering whether it should continue.
Data migration poses significant risks, so monitor it closely and ensure access to the data you didn't import in case you need it later.
For large, established schools, the bar will likely be set high, so plan accordingly.
Finance (Previously listed as roughly 5% of the total budget)
Extra support for finance is an option. The option is to mitigate the risk of finance not coping with the rate of change. I would suggest 5% is well spent and believe that an external consultant familiar with a SIS changeover is possibly the best route in this case.
I have seen schools bring in a temporary internal resource to releave pressure on the finance staff, but I'm not convinced that this either saves money or releaves that much pressure.
The finance team really just want someone who knows how to do finance in the new systems. Just give them that and they will be happy. Done properly you probably won't use 5% of your budget unless you start getting into reporting.
Governance (Previously listed as roughly 5% of the total budget)
Hiring an external consultant familiar with SIS' can be the best investment for your project. Their expertise can help avoid obvious pitfalls, providing significant benefits to schools.
If you're aiming to save money, consider providing some block hours for the consultant. This might not allow you to fully realize all benefits, but it should mitigate major risks, such as choosing the wrong SIS.
Unknown (Previously listed as roughly 10% of the total budget)
There still will be unknown unknowns within your project. If you have no budget, it just means you have no resources to fix those unknown issues. You can mitigate the bigger risks to this area with an IT consultant that gone down this path before and/or is performing governance on the project.
Contigency (Previously listed as roughly +10% of the total budget)
My belief is that you should never need a contigency, but having one means that if you get 95% of the way through the project you have a way of pushing through the last 5%.
Other Ideas
Be a Good Customer
Being a good customer costs nothing, but it can take a bit of effort. Show up to a meeting with positivity and a smile, sing the praises of the consultants that you are working with and the products that you use. Offer to provide testimonials when the project ends. This will impact on the budget but more so, it will likely impact on quality. People will care about the work and will be more likely to go the extra mile.
In one case I've had a client that was very easy to work with and always promoted my company. When I had a chance and without any prompting, I chose to lower some hourly rates and to volunteer some time. This was largely because they were easy to work with.
Conversly if a school is negative, unecessarily beurocratic, overly protective of i.p. this will cost the school more in terms of who will work with them and at what price.
Fixing the Current SIS/Systems
Consider if you can spend money improving the current systems. If you have an implementation of TASS, or Sentral Enterprise that you are unhappy with, you can almost certainly improve this for a fraction of the cost. Having a pair of fresh eyes look over a failed implementation or systems that you aren't happy with will likely yeild value. I sometimes see problems develop between schools and the SIS vendours with problems coming from both sides. The internal staff puts in a ticket to the SIS vendor ranting about their product and fail to follow up on the ticket is a common on. This unsurprisingly doesn't improve the situation.
This might also involve reviewing the other systems that you use and how they interact and where the low hanging fruit is.
Advantages of the Smaller Budget
I'll close with the point that while a smaller budget is not ideal, it is not always detrimental. It imposes limitations on what the school can achieve, but it also encourages more careful spending. This constraint often leads to following well-established methods and benefiting from the experience of others, reducing the risk of unexpected pitfalls.
In my opinion, a smaller budget isn't ideal, but it can still allow for the achievement of most short-term goals and eventually all goals. However, it is crucial to set a reasonable budget to ensure that the project can attain a level of success that justifies the effort.
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