{"id":939,"date":"2018-02-27T17:04:47","date_gmt":"2018-02-27T22:04:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/research.ncsu.edu\/intranet\/era\/?p=939"},"modified":"2025-03-13T09:45:02","modified_gmt":"2025-03-13T13:45:02","slug":"era-vendor-recommendation-made","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/research.ncsu.edu\/era\/era-vendor-recommendation-made\/","title":{"rendered":"eRA Vendor Recommendation Made"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n\n

The eRA <\/span>Executive Sponsors<\/span><\/a>\u2019 long-awaited decision has been made. The committee accepted the Steering Team\u2019s recommendation to move forward with InfoEd Global in early February.<\/span><\/p>\n

This marked the beginning of NC State\u2019s award negotiation process with the vendor. Following negotiations \u2014 barring any unforeseen circumstances \u2014 the first phase of the approximately three-year implementation process will begin. <\/span><\/p>\n

Additionally, InfoEd has agreed to begin working with the university on the implementation plan while contract negotiations take place. <\/span><\/p>\n

This means once the official signatures have been stroked, it should be possible to share a completed high-level timeline for system implementation, among other useful pieces of information.<\/span><\/p>\n

Furthermore, it means now is a great time to look back on the final steps of the vendor selection process, why the steering team ultimately made its decision, and why all stakeholders should feel confident the right decision was made.<\/span><\/p>\n

Proofs of Concept<\/b><\/h3>\n

After the original on-campus demos, the two \u201chighest-scoring\u201d vendors \u2014 InfoEd and Huron \u2014 were asked to return once more to perform a more in-depth demonstration, which is known as a Proof of Concept (POC).<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cBased on what we saw in the on-campus demos, we understood pretty well how the products would work as delivered,\u201d Steering Team Liaison Sherrie Settle said. \u201cBut we, on the leadership team, still had some questions\u2026 about how we\u2019d use each product to do things more specific to NC State.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Settle said the leadership team came into the POC stage believing either of the finalists\u2019 products would meet all of the high-priority requirements.<\/span><\/p>\n

But they weren\u2019t sure how much flexibility each product had to accommodate unique needs, such as those specific to NC State, or unforeseeable future requirements, like ones the UNC System could eventually implement.<\/span><\/p>\n

According to Settle, the POC demonstrations allowed her and everyone involved in the decision-making process to put these concerns to rest.<\/span><\/p>\n

These demonstrations included folks with extensive expertise in the IT field to ensure our local systems and OIT would be able to support the new eRA as an enterprise system. But, to keep things balanced, they also included folks from the other end of the spectrum, like Settle, who could look at things from the campus user\u2019s perspective.<\/span><\/p>\n

Specifically, the vendors were asked to demonstrate the management of three things to ensure the new system would be able to either replicate or improve upon the processes currently in use: <\/span><\/p>\n