Cloud

HESS Consortium Collective Taps Oracle Cloud for ERP/SIS

• By Rhea Kelly
• 02/08/21

Thirty-three member institutions in the HESS Consortium have joined together to form the HESS Consortium ERP/SIS Collective — and selected the Oracle Cloud for Higher Education as the group's enterprise resource planning and student information system platform. The Higher Education Systems & Services (HESS) Consortium is a nonprofit, membership-run organization for private colleges and universities, focused on collectively lowering costs and increasing collaboration in the area of administrative systems and services.

According to a news announcement, the group's technology choice was based on product functionality in Finance, Human Resources, Financial Aid and SIS; scalability; initial and long-term affordability; and the ability to create a support and resource network for participating institutions. In the works is a HESS Collective ASSIST Support Network, which will enable HESS member institutions to share technical and staff resources for planning, implementing and operating the Oracle Cloud solution.

Oracle partners Mythics and Drivestream were selected for procurement, implementation, training and support. The deal was negotiated using the Mythics contract for Oracle products through E&I Cooperative Services.

"Finding a great software solution that was affordable was the central focus for our platform selection working group," said Todd Norris, CIO at Saint Mary's College in Notre Dame, IN, in a statement. "All of our HESS Collective working groups were focused on finding a modern, cloud-native product that both met our functional needs while being affordable to HESS private institutions with varying financial resources. We are very excited that Oracle and their partners offered something that was truly groundbreaking to our private colleges and universities."

"We believe that this partnership between the HESS Consortium, Oracle, Mythics, Drivestream and E&I will change the way private, nonprofit institutions evaluate, purchase, implement and operate their ERP/SIS systems well into the future," commented Keith Fowlkes, executive director and co-founder of the HESS Consortium. "The HESS Collective program has the potential to be a magnet for all private, non-profit colleges and universities in the U.S. for finding modern cloud-native ERP and SIS systems at amazingly affordable prices. This is a true game-changer in private higher education technology."