CIBER Completes First Phase of $19 Million Fulton County Schools SAP Project

by Diane Stoner

CIBER, Inc. has successfully completed -- on time and under budget -- the first phase of an SAP(R) ERP implementation for the Fulton County School System.

CIBER, an SAP Preferred Services Partner for SAP Public Services Accounts, is the contractor managing the school system's transition from an older, outdated business system to SAP. As the fourth largest K-12 school system in Georgia and among the largest 50 in the nation, Fulton County Schools (FCS) is one of the first adopters of SAP's latest application release and the first K-12 organization to take advantage of the enhanced functionality provided in Human Capital Management (HCM) and Finance.

For the first phase, CIBER is serving as prime contractor and has just completed implementing the integrated business functions of financials, logistics, plant maintenance, project systems and select components of HCM and Business Intelligence.

The project is a major initiative which will significantly streamline operations and increase business process efficiencies. Since the system provides many features and tools to support the new operations, CIBER is employing its change management methodology to train staff on how to maximize their use of the system and adapt to the new business processes.

"Our first day on the new system was October 1, and it went very well," said Charles Sipos, FCS Executive Director of Information Technology and FCS SAP Project Manager. "The new system demands greater rigor than our previous legacy mainframe system. This is good in that it fosters greater process discipline and data accuracy than our previous system provided. As we get comfortable with the system, we will continue to gain the efficiencies and productivity now possible. Using CIBER as our implementation partner has proven to be the right choice for Fulton County Schools. CIBER has been very understanding of our climate and responsive to our needs while bringing their expertise to the project."

The new system -- which includes applications for (among others) general ledger, accounts payable, purchasing, contract management, requisitioning, facilities management, and funds management -- will enable FCS to use one IT system to track nearly all of its operational needs, thereby integrating all organizational data and business processes for all departments and personnel in the organization.

"Success of this project is absolutely founded on the time and effort expended by the project team during the initial phases," said Kevin Ziemba, Executive Director of CIBER's Public Sector and K-12 ERP Practice. "Successful projects are predicated on a project culture and are not based on the independent activities of individuals. Our ability to stay within the established project frameworks, governance, organizational change management, training, and scope management minimized barriers and obstacles that typically challenge projects of this magnitude. Together, we fostered a culture of success which started from day one with sponsorship from the Fulton County School Board and Superintendent and then radiated throughout the executive staff and project teams."

For the second and only remaining phase, which is currently in progress, CIBER is also serving as prime contractor. CIBER is implementing additional Human Capital Management functions for Fulton County. At the completion of that milestone, Fulton County will be able to use SAP applications for the majority of their back office and HCM processing.

CIBER provides information technology consulting services for local, state, and federal government entities and private and public companies, and was recently listed among the top ten global IT outsourcing vendors, and among the top 50 best managed global outsourcing vendors, according to a June 2007 Brown-Wilson Group survey. The Brown-Wilson Group conducts annual surveys of CEOs, CFOs, CIOs, and other business decision-makers at Fortune 2000 organizations to understand users' evaluations of global outsourcing service providers