Business Operations

Andover Newton Streamlines Operations with ERP

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 04/27/10

Andover Newton Theological School has adopted technology to streamline its academic and business operations. The 400-student campus in Newton Centre, MA recently decided to move to CAMS Enterprise, an enterprise resource management system from Three Rivers Systems, to manage its student lifecycle.

The product includes multiple modules that integrate to use a single database with one set of shared code. The integrated suite provides functionality for constituent resource management, registration, financial aid, billing, fundraising, portals, and course management.

According to Susan Hunt, chief financial officer, the vendor's references helped make the choice. "They provided us with 10 references, and we called them all. The story was always the same: a great system, risk-free, easy to use, little maintenance and fast, verifiably higher ROI," Hunt said.

Hunt added that Tim Swansey, director of IT at Andover Newton, was influential in the decision to choose CAMS. "Tim has extensive experience as a developer with one of CAMS' competitors. He was impressed with how CAMS integrated all of the administrative functions within a common user interface," she said.

She said she anticipates a fairly speedy return on investment. "With CAMS Enterprise's easy-to-use Microsoft-based Web architecture and total integration around a single, secure database, we will realize huge savings in maintenance and upgrade costs while also enjoying much greater productivity," she said.