He managed to get through Y2K, but a major question remained: How would he handle the other enterprise system rollouts staring him in the face?

Standardizing at Stanford
Like Northeastern, Stanford University also bought into the late '90s enterprise software pitch. But unlike Northeastern, Stanford never slowed down its implementation engine. "In hindsight, we tried to do too much in too little time," says Randy Livingston, Stanford's vice president of business affairs and CFO.

Starting in 2001, Stanford implemented student administration systems, PeopleSoft HR, Oracle financials and several other ancillary applications. Four years later, users still complain that they have lower productivity with the new systems than with the previous ones, which were supported by a highly customized mainframe. Users also have had difficulties in accessing critical information on a timely basis. Livingston says many transactions—such as initiating a purchase requisition or requesting a reimbursement—take longer for users to do than with the prior legacy system.

Stanford has also not realized any of the projected savings the vendors promised. "We are finding that the new ERP applications cost considerably more to support than our legacy applications," Livingston says. And he doesn't know how much it will cost to get the enterprise systems working at the level everyone was accustomed to.

But Stanford's biggest problem is that its IT department is still trying to get campuswide buy-in for the enterprise applications, which have necessitated new ways of doing business. And that either leads to nonuse of the new systems or costly customizations to keep everyone happy. For example, Stanford's law school operates on a semester schedule, while the other six schools operate on a trimester schedule. "This means that every aspect of the student administration system needs to be configured differently for the law school," Livingston says. Within the schools, some faculty are paid a 12-month salary; other schools pay by nine months, 10 months or 11 months. "The standard HR payroll system is not designed to handle all these unusual pay schedules," Livingston says.

Livingston has his work cut out for him now that his CIO, Chris Handley, resigned in December 2004 and forced him to take over the IT reins. Livingston has since reorganized the IT department, which he hopes will be better able to manage the enterprise projects going forward. He created a separate administrative systems group that will report directly to him, with responsibility for development, integration and support of the major ERP systems.