It will touch every single individual. CMS includes integrated software applications that manage data and communications for human resources, finance and student systems. So faculty or staff members who look up student data, anyone involved in hiring or maintaining attendance records – be it student, staff or faculty members; anyone buying supplies or performing accounting duties for departments – all will be using CMS.

Every campus operates differently, but we all have common functions that we perform. It is these common functions that CMS will affect, and everyone on campus either performs tasks involved in these functions or is affected by them.

We began the process with human resources first and hope to “go live” in November 2005. We kick off the process of implementing the finance section in November and expect to have it in wide-spread use by July 2006. The last segment, student systems, will begin in September 2005, with completion sometime in July 2008.

We established a campus steering committee that will meet regularly to discuss issues, review progress, provide resources and make decisions. In May, members of the human resources project team began visiting campuses similar in size and makeup to Fullerton. One of our visits was to Cal State Northridge, where we became familiar with some of the planning and issues they faced prior to implementing all three modules in October 2003. We also visited San Francisco State and Cal State San Marcos.

We looked at the strengths and weaknesses of each campus’s efforts and have come up with ways we hope will make the process go smoothly on our campus. One very important component is to keep the campus informed of what is being done and how individuals can be involved.

Definitely – and we are already planning a support system, like the Help Desk, that will assist individuals using CMS. We’re trying to build an infrastructure that answers all the questions that come up – not just during implementation, but also for the long term.