So, it’s official. Miami will be upgrading its Banner ERP system from version 8 to version 9. We have done lots of upgrades since Banner was introduced in 1998. Why is this upgrade different?

Wrapping our minds around Banner

Banner is big and growing. Last year, Miami processed over 13 million transactions through our Banner infrastructure and we maintained over 800 interfaces to other transactional and reporting systems.

And, Banner 9 is not just a simple upgrade. With version 9 Ellucian, Banner’s parent company, moves its ERP platform to a new strategic architecture they call Extensible Ecosystem (XE). This new ecosystem provides a flexible framework that will make it easier and more efficient to implement, manage, and grow Miami’s ERP in the future.

Upgrading the “basics” from v.8 to v.9 will be significant, but Miami’s Banner environment includes over 100 modifications or “mods” that have been designed to adapt Banner to Miami business practices over the past 18 years. The majority of those mods are not compatible with XE and will need to be removed or re-engineered – a considerable amount of work for both IT and offices across the institution.

To give you a picture of how big this effort will be, it has a projected budget of approximately $7 million and is scheduled to take up to 2 years to complete.

Why now?

Ellucian has notified Miami that they will end support for most Banner 8 modules in December 2018.

Special cases

While the December 2018 deadline applies to most of the Banner modules we use, there are several that have different dispositions.

The Advancement module will be discontinued after v.9. As a short-term solution Advancement will upgrade to v.9 and a separate project will research long term options. Banner’s administrative Travel and Expense module also has a different development trajectory. Since this is end of life as of December 2017, new cloud applications, including Concur and Chrome Technologies, are currently being evaluated to replace that functionality. Implementation of the product chosen will be managed in a separate project.

What do you need to do now?

The project steering team wants everyone to have a basic awareness of this project. If you are keeping tabs on what is going on, it will be much easier for you to engage when your turn arrives. At a 30,000 foot level, here are the messages we want you to hear:

• Banner is big. It touches nearly everyone at Miami.
• Due to its size and scope, this is a Miami project, not just an IT project.
• Version 9 is built differently than previous versions.
• That difference will require major reworking of any Miami modifications.

Watch for frequent updates on Miami news channels and a new project website filled with up-to-date project information.