Private Colleges and Universities Working Together to Lower Long-term Enterprise Operation Costs

Over the past five years, the HESS Consortium of over 225 private colleges and universities has discussed a way to lower the costs of its enterprise systems while moving to a modern, cloud-native platform. This effort included creating a cooperative contract vehicle, and selecting a common platform for ERP, HR, student financial aid, and SIS functionality. One of the major goals was negotiating system pricing that would be affordable and sustainable for the majority of HESS institutions. Another goal was to establish a collaborative member network to share staff expertise, both in IT and in operational areas. In January 2020, a subcommittee of 33 HESS Consortium institutions officially formed the HESS Collective Program. Over the course of 14 months, these institutions evaluated major cloud-native enterprise solutions and selected Oracle Cloud for Higher Education as the common platform. This growing group of now over 55 Collective members are creating a network to share staff expertise, documentation, reports/analytics, and training resources. Working with Collective partners Oracle, Mythics, Drivestream, and E&I Cooperative Services, this growing group of institutions is creating a new national model by negotiating groundbreaking pricing for software licensing, implementation support, and integration services, as well as developing plans for organizational governance, resource sharing, and grant funding.