News

Allegany College Consolidates Administrative Systems

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 06/02/09

Allegany College in Cumberland, MD has selected Datatel applications to consolidate administrative and fundraising functions. The college has licensed Datatel Colleague, which will replace a homegrown administration system, and Colleague Advancement, which will replace Blackbaud's The Raiser's Edge fundraising software currently in use. The decision to partner with Datatel was made after a two-year evaluation of competitive products.

"We chose Colleague and Colleague Advancement because the value versus cost was unrivaled," said Tim Pelesky, associate dean of IT. "We liked that Colleague is designed specifically for higher education and has everything we need in one integrated solution. Datatel also has a solid track record with community colleges in Maryland, which is important to us because of our close collaboration with other two-year colleges within the state."

Datatel Colleague is an enterprise resource planning system for streamlining departmental workflows and business processes across the institution. Colleague Advancement enables users to manage campaign goals and donor information while bolstering their relationships with constituents.

"With our legacy homegrown system, we spent much of our time developing the system's architecture. Now, with Colleague and Colleague Advancement, we'll be able to develop within the system using tools and templates that rely on business rules," said Pelesky.

The college will also give constituents access to campus-wide information and resources using Datatel's ActiveCampus Portal, a web-based workgroup collaboration and social networking system. Built on Microsoft SharePoint technology, ActiveCampus Portal provides a single point of access to an institution's applications and services.

Other new clients of Datatel include Lake Tahoe Community College in California; Union County College in Cranford, NJ; and Vanguard University of Southern California in Costa Mesa.