MCC misses upgrade deadline
By BRETT ROWLAND
CRYSTAL LAKE – McHenry County College officials won’t hit a self-imposed deadline set as part of a $7 million computer system upgrade.
The college hired Campus Management, a Florida-based company, to integrate its administrative and academic computer systems. About $3 million has been spent on the project.
Some features of the new system, including programs for payroll, human resources and finance, are active. However, the school’s former system was built with Cobalt software. That has created snags in integrating it with other features, such as a student portal that would allow users to pay bills, check on financial aid and register for classes.
These issues led to major headaches during the 2009 registration for fall classes. MCC’s server crashed, and many students had to wait in long lines to sign up for courses. Since then, college
employees have reworked the old Cobalt system to handle registration.
The new system was scheduled to go online in September, but setbacks have pushed the deadline back, interim President Kathleen Plinske said.
“We are working with Campus Management to move forward,” she said. “We are trying to figure out what the next steps are now.”
Plinske said more information on what will happen, including a schedule for implementation, would be available in the coming weeks.
The delay won’t significantly disrupt MCC’s operations, Plinske said, but the upgrade definitely will be needed to keep the college competitive in the future.
“A lot of this is already in place, but it is not integrated,” she said. “We don’t want to rush the process.”
Called enterprise resource planning, or ERP, the project essentially is the computer system that runs the college and stores all its historical data.
“We will eventually have the ERP up and running, we just don’t know when right now,” Plinske said.
