Education Meets Enterprise: Building the Business of Betterment

Matt McCaskey, Director of Application Development, Milton Hershey School

Matt McCaskey, Director of Application Development, Milton Hershey School

In education, our profits are measured in terms of lives impacted for the better, and our bottom line is measured in making a difference rather than making a dollar. That said, our organizations still have many of the same challenges managing our day-to-day operations that for-profit entities do, and the uniqueness of serving the myriad needs of students and staff strengthens the need for streamlined back-office processes and procedures. This is especially true of Milton Hershey School (MHS), a residential school located in Hershey, Pennsylvania, for students in pre-K through 12th grade from low-income and at-risk backgrounds. We serve as a home and school for more than 2,000 students and more than 2,000 staff, including teachers, administration, home life staff, dental and medical staff, safety and security personnel, and operations staff who ensure our students have a safe and nurturing place to focus on their education, explore their interests, and just be a kid. This means there is a lot of behind-the-scenes technology that makes every element run smoothly.

To handle the wide range of human resource, financial, and supply chain tasks required of our administrators, MHS has implemented an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that allows our organization to consolidate our operations while also encapsulating most of our back-office transactions and functions. Utilizing an on-premise version of the ERP gives our IT staff greater flexibility to adapt the ERP solution to our wide range of users and greater ability to access our data in customized reports and dashboards.

"In education, our profits are measured in terms of lives impacted for the better, and our bottom line is measured in making a difference rather than making a dollar."

For any educational organization considering the implementation of an ERP or an upgrade to existing systems, many factors must be evaluated to determine the right solution or if a new solution is a prudent decision.

1. Cost: Most educational organizations are operating on tight budgets, so the complexity and functionality of an ERP must first be weighed against the total cost to implement or upgrade back-office software.

2. Current Architecture: Consider how the potential ERP solution would integrate with existing systems and if any functions would be superfluous.

3. Security: Information security is paramount in today's cyber landscape, and a significant advantage can be gained if a selected ERP affords your organization improved authentication and authorization. On the contrary, your leadership must also entertain and embrace the idea that an ERP is designed by nature to put more information into more users’ hands to facilitate better and faster decision-making.

Once the decision is made to implement or upgrade your organization’s back-office systems to an ERP, there are several other considerations that will make the transition as smooth as possible. The most important of which is often change management. The rapid change of many of the organization’s daily functions can be difficult and worrisome to a contingent of your workforce because they will rely on the ERP to facilitate daily life.

For example, at MHS, we have several end-user groups that depend on the ERP. One that we must keep in mind with every upgrade is our Home Life department. As mentioned, MHS is a residential school where students live and learn year-round, so housing is unique at our school because students are cared for and supported by married couples, called house-parents, in student homes—individual family-style dwellings that house eight to 12 students of similar age and same gender. Just as a traditional family home operates, there are basic needs that must be met for our more than 180 student homes on the MHS campus. An ERP system helps us deal with this size of scale in many ways. House-parents order groceries and clothing for our students through our on-campus inventory with the system but also place work orders for home or technology repairs. Meanwhile, house-parents and all other employees utilize the ERP for absence requests, expense reports, managing benefits, viewing paychecks, and other operational tasks.

An ERP solution allows MHS to provide better back-end support to our entire community, while the built-in security and scalable integration allow our IT staff the ability to adapt to the ever-changing nature of education and business with minimal impact on our users. Because of this centralized system, our varied and complicated operations run smoothly so our students can learn, thrive, and grow, and we are equipped to expand to meet the needs as our school also continues to expand to serve more children in need.