Summary
In 2014 Olds College management recognized that the college’s aging administrative systems were becoming difficult to maintain. The board approved a project to replace the college’s financial, payroll and student services systems with an integrated enterprise resource planning (ERP) system.
In 2015 we assessed the college’s readiness to implement the first module (finance) of its ERP system. We evaluated the design of the college’s project controls for mitigating the risks of its ERP implementation plan. The recommendations from our audit provided an early warning to the college of weaknesses in the project implementation plan. In particular, we recommended that the college improve its:
- detailed project planning
- business change planning
- oversight of project risk management
The college’s finance module went live on November 1, 2015.
Objective and Scope
We examined the actions management took to implement our three October 2015 recommendations.
Conclusion
The college implemented the finance module and achieved the objectives management defined at the start of the project. The college can learn valuable lessons from this implementation that it can apply when implementing future ERP modules.