NACUBO Article Reports on Kuali Financial System Implementation Successes

Publication of Anna-Louise Jackson's insightful article, "Going for the Bold" (Business Officer Magazine, February 2010), confirms what the Kuali Community has long contended—that collaboratively developed administrative software provides enormous benefit to higher education institutions of all types and sizes.

Specifically, the article reports on the experiences of several early adopters of the collaboratively developed Kuali Financial System (KFS). Jackson first offers a brief history of the Kuali Foundation. She then explains how each institution selected the Kuali Financial System and provides opinions from institutional leaders regarding the greatest benefits of the system and advice to others who are considering or actively planning to adopt it. Altogether, this informative report is an excellent example of NACUBO's continuing commitment to advance the economic viability and business practices of higher education institutions in fulfillment of their academic missions.

In "Going for the Bold", Jackson mentions the importance of commercial support for the Kuali Financial System and the role of commercial partners in the Kuali community. Some readers may not realize the extent to which rSmart—a founding member of the Kuali Foundation and a commercial partner providing support and services for several Kuali projects—was involved with the early adopters of this system. To date, all institutions that have implemented the KFS for full production have worked closely with rSmart. As the only commercial affiliate to be involved since the inception of the KFS project, rSmart has been a logical choice for institutions that want to reap the benefits of the Kuali Financial System but do not possess the full range of resources or depth of experience required to implement a complex enterprise-wide system.

To read more about the experiences of Colorado State University, San Joaquin Delta College, and Naval Postgraduate School, and to learn more about rSmart's contributions to their successful implementations of the Kuali Financial System, download Keys To Success. This document (developed jointly by the three institutions and rSmart) shares important information about the processes used, best practiced identified, and approaches that did and did not prove successful in each case. It also highlights differences in approach and perspective among the three institutions and includes information about the challenges and issues each faced in order to present a realistic and balanced view of each institution's experience.

Jonny Brown
Sr. Information Architect
rSmart