The HESS Consortium’s ERP/SIS Collective Selects Mythics & Oracle Cloud

Wednesday, March 3, 2021 - 10:53am
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By Keith Fowlkes Vice President, Technology, E&I Cooperative Services
Originally posted for the E&I Technology BLOG linked here.

The HESS Consortium is a group of 210 private, non-profit E&I member colleges and universities that are looking for new ways to collaborate and uncover cost savings opportunities in ERP/SIS operations and cloud services. The HESS Collective, a subset of the Consortium comprised of 32 institutions, spent over 14 months evaluating several cloud-native ERP/SIS solutions to select a common, modern ERP/SIS platform for participants to move their current platform to over an estimated timeframe of 5 years.

Click here to view the announcement / overview video.

Main Goals of the Initiative

The main goals of the HESS Collective initiative were to:

  • Create a network of HESS Collective institutions to share staff resources and expertise and lower staff costs.
  • Move to a single, modern cloud-native ERP/SIS solution.
  • Move to a common contract vehicle through E&I Cooperative Services for software and services.
  • Develop a shared archive to ease migration and implementation costs.

The Decision

In February of 2021, the Collective selected Oracle Cloud for Higher Education as their common, cloud-native platform through the E&I contract with Mythics, Inc. for Oracle product licensing. Mythics will subcontract implementation services from Drivestream, Inc. as the preferred Oracle implementation and integration services provider for participating institutions.

HESS Collective Initiative Features

The initiative features competitive pricing for participating HESS Collective member institutions through the E&I Mythics agreement, and will take advantage of the contract’s industry-leading low renewal rates over the next ten years. Product functionality and competitive software pricing, implementation costs, and renewal rates were so convincing to the HESS Consortium membership that the number of participating institutions grew to 54 private, non-profit colleges and universities within days.

“Finding a great software solution that was also affordable was the central focus for our platform selection working group,” said Todd Norris, CIO at Saint Mary’s College – Notre Dame, IN. “All HESS Collective working groups were focused on finding a modern, cloud-native solution that met our functional needs as well as those of 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.”

Modern, Affordable, ERP/SIS Platform

This agreement makes Oracle Cloud for Higher Education software and implementation costs affordable and financially sustainable for small and mid-sized institutions. The HESS Consortium believes that this program will attract other private, non-profit colleges and universities seeking a modern, affordable, and community-supported ERP/SIS platform over the next 10+ years.

For more information on the initiative, please visit www.hessconsortium.org/collective.