1 sm Using E-Business Solutions to Meet Management Challenges: Interoperability & Flexibility Bring Success to the Implementation of Specialized Components University of Pennsylvania & Overture Copyright Robin H. Beck and Andrew Weiss, This work is the intellectual property of the author. Permission is granted for this material to be shared for non-commercial, educational purposes, provided that this copyright appears on the reproduced materials and notice is given that the copying is by permission of the author. To disseminate otherwise or to republish requires written permission from the author. Presentation to EDUCAUSE: October 2, 2002

2 sm Presenters Robin Beck, University of Pennsylvania Vice President of Information Systems & Computing Andrew Weiss, Overture COO and CTO

3 sm Technology and Business Value Objective for today’s presentation: To examine an example of how Penn used vertical integration practices to implement new technologies and garner significant business value in their Financial Aid practices

4 sm University and Financial Aid Challenges Rising costs and a large “cost of waste” in processing financial transactions due to highly complex methodologies, rules and regulations and inefficient and lengthy processes Increasing expectations of parents and students to receive excellent “customer service” and have the ability to accomplish research and tasks via the Internet BUSINESS VALUE

5 sm BUSINESS VALUE Service Goals Demystify the financial aid process by providing information and tasks via the web Improve service to students by accomplishing back office tasks with expert systems, leaving more “face time” for students Reduce the number of “fact and process” inquiries from students Customize and personalize content through use of a content management system Accelerate student/parent financial aid “negotiation”

6 sm BUSINESS VALUE Productivity Goals Allow workload to be more efficiently distributed, routing difficult/complex cases to the most appropriate staff Optimize financial aid resources and reduce tuition discounting by matching appropriate financial aid to desired student population Reduce large clerical effort, peak workload stress and training costs; replace manual effort with scalable expert system technology and deploy intuitive, easy-to-use graphical user interface (GUI) Reduce brochure printing and mailing costs and offer 24-hour re- evaluation response time

7 sm PENN INFRASTRUCTURE Penn Information Systems and Computing has developed technology infrastructure principles and practices that enable effective integration: –Business benefits –Technology standards –Program management practices Overture was selected in part because they could conform to these principles. Best practices

8 sm PENN INFRASTRUCTURE Vertical Solutions & Application Sourcing Overture is a vertical solution that met the specific needs of the Student Financial Services department and was also easily integrated with Penn’s core systems Penn InTouch, a web-based, student self-service application, serves as an access point for a wide variety of internal and vendor-specific software

9 sm PENN INFRASTRUCTURE Working with a vertical technology vendor to achieve the solution with the highest business value and mitigate risk: –Application sourcing strategy based on business benefits, compatible architectures and technologies, depth of functionality, time to delivery, vendor characteristics –Vertical integration within financial aid rather than horizontal integration –Three-way team, with appropriate representatives and roles from the business group, technology group, and the vendor –Interfaces to core systems built in-house, based on clear specifications of inbound and outbound data needs –Quality Assurance testing by Penn and joint implementation with vendor Integration in action

10 sm OVERTURE TECHNOLOGY Product Objectives 1.Scalable - able to handle a heavy transactional load 2.Reliable - reliability and availability level of the system is critical to allowing students and staff to access the system 3.Rapidly Deployable – develop and deploy to a University’s system in projects of 2 to 6 months in duration 4.Open Standards - permit lower acquisition costs for software and hardware and more durable, longer life solutions

11 sm OVERTURE TECHNOLOGY Technologies Used Java, Enterprise Java Beans, Soap, WSDL, XML, J2EE Expert systems Open platform, vendor-independent Scalable and secure Extensible and easy to upgrade Interoperable with core university systems

12 sm OVERTURE TECHNOLOGY How Objectives and Technologies Come Together

13 sm OVERTURE TECHNOLOGY PennPlan online Award Underwriter Rule Manager

14 sm Questions & Answers For additional information contact: Robin Beck, VP Information Systems & Computing, 215/ , Andrew Weiss, COO & CTO, 301/ ,