If you haven't heard of Harrisburg University in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, that's okay because this not-for-profit undergraduate science and technology institution is still in its formative stages. In fact, Harrisburg will be the last state capital to gets its first four-year university. Chartered in 2001, Harrisburg University is part of a project to attract information technology companies and biosciences companies to Central Pennsylvania. This financially depressed area has seen low-paying warehouse jobs replacing high-paying manufacturing jobs. The school's administration spent the first four years planning and getting approvals from government agencies.

Although the school has been operating for three years, it's about to ramp up with its first official home -- a $76 million, 16-story, 250,000 square foot academic building to be finished in 2009. In December 2006, Harrisburg University raised $89 million by selling tax-exempt bonds. Eric Darr, the school's CFO and executive vice president, says, "This amount includes the $76 million we needed for the building, and an additional $13 million for associated costs. We had orders for $1.1 billion. It was a 12-time oversubscribed tax-exempt offering, which was phenomenal for us. It dropped the use of our money by about 1000 basis points."

Enterpriseleadership.org recently sat down with Dr. Darr to discuss how he is handling all of the IT investments needed for this new building, as well as the university itself.  Before joining the school, he worked as the CFO of a software company. He also has taught at UCLA's MBA program. Here is what he had to say:

EL. Can you provide some background on how the school came out?

ED. In 1999, Central Pennsylvania leaders from the community, local government, and local businesses did a survey to find out what the Harrisburg area needed to do if it wanted to be successful economically in areas such as education, business, and healthcare. Higher education turned out to be a big piece of it. We had too many students leaving the area because they couldn't find decent jobs.  The results of the survey showed that if we educated our area youth in science and technology, than we could attract other students and other companies to this area.

EL. In addition to the tax-exempt bond offering, how else did you raise monies?

ED. We raised operational monies from private donors, such as individuals and corporations. We received some operational monies form the U.S. Dept. of Education, and capital money from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.

EL. What is your school's mission and business model?

ED. Our mission is to make science and technology education most accessible. Our program comprises two broad areas: biosciences and biotechnology, and information technology, including IT project management, computer and information systems, geospatial technology, and learning technologies.

Our business model is to leverage our relationships with the corporate community, and in turn give something back to them. We made a decision not to hire the typical adjunct faculty who teach one or two courses a semester and that's all. Our corporate faculty not only teaches the courses, but they also design the courses and advise students.  Many of our corporate partners provide faculty members, internships and project sites, leadership support on our curriculum advisory board, and philanthropic support.  In return, our corporate partners get interns and qualified employees. For example, a local architectural and engineering firm, which also is one of the 50 largest in the U.S., hired several graduates with degrees in geographic and geospatial technologies. This company has had a hard time finding GIS analysts and technologists. They were delighted to get high quality graduates who could step right in and be productive from day one. That's why this company continues to invest in us.

EL. Can you describe the purpose of the new 16-story building and the type of technology it has?

ED. This's the university's first home and our second building. We built an initial five-story building. The university is part of project that includes an affiliated math and technology high school. Because we quickly outgrew that building, we needed a true home.  Currently we have classrooms and labs in five different locations spread across downtown Harrisburg.  The 16-story building will house our academic center.

EL. What is your role at the university?

ED. Our president handles all of the external administration tasks, such as fund raising, community relations, and trustee relations. I handle all of the internal administration tasks including finance, human resources, IT, and the library.

EL. What types of technologies will the new building have?

ED. We'll have advanced audio and video technologies in every classroom. We can capture what goes on in a classroom and transmit it from one classroom to another classroom. We can have different teams in different parts of the building collaborating with each other facilitated by technology. We can stream what happens in a classroom to other parts of the world. Using collaboration technologies, we can participate online with other universities or corporate teams anywhere. We're using RFID technologies. Before instructors walk into a classroom, they put their RFID badge in the door, and the classroom automatically configures the technology each instructor requires.

The building and its surrounding external areas will provide for wireless connectivity. Students must have laptops so they can transmit their work through voice over IP.  We want both students and faculty members to use their laptops or PDAs to check email or to take calls anywhere in the area.

EL. How are you collaborating with the IT people for carrying out these projects?

ED. Members of our IT team will act as project managers for the vendors that our providing services to us in the building construction. Some vendors are large, while some are small. For example, a local vendor will handle all of the audio-visual equipment. Cisco will take care of all of our connectivity needs. 

Our construction manager for the entire project has the responsibility for delivering the entire building, including all technology aspects of it. At the next level, we have a technology-commissioning agent who looks at the integration of all of the systems. Once everything from the network wiring to the electrical systems is in place, our commissioning agent will perform tests to make sure that all of the systems function properly together. A vendor would just test the reliability of its own system. Our building access system must integrate with our elevator system, which must integrate with our lighting control system. This agent has a coordinating agent to get things installed. My team acts as the administrative coordinator. We create the timeline and the budget, make sure we properly allocate resources, and try to keep things happening on the timeline.

EL. Can you describe your budget process and your project management process for making these investments? How automated are the tools you have at your disposal?

ED. We use an ERP system, which is designed for academic institutions, to handle our overall university budget, and the costs centers created by managers, such as CIOs. They put together an annual plan of the projects they would like to fund. Projects involving hardware, software, and capital maintenance costs get considered with all of the budget requests, including academic. The system automatically helps us to do "what if analysis." If we give the CIO everything he wants, we need to know what affect that decision would have on the rest of the University budget. Ultimately, the system allows us to track all expenditures. For example, once we set an IT budget, the CIO can track the monthly true expenditures versus his budget. That's the pure dollars and sense side of it.

We use a collaboration tool to manage the projects. I meet with the CIO bi-weekly.  Before each meeting, I can look at the status of each project and determine which ones I need to talk to him about further. He can create summary sheets for our meetings. This process helps him to manage his team. His team inputs information into the collaboration tool so we have a log of everything that has happened. We can update and prioritize issues.

EL. Why did you make the decision to go with an ERP system, given that the school is just getting off the ground?

ED. We started with a series of unconnected administrative technology applications and databases. We besieged students and parents with paper forms they had to complete in university offices. Because employees wasted valuable time re-entering data, we became concerned about the accuracy of student data. We desperately needed a better, more integrated, and more secure way of managing student data and accounts.
We struggled with the decision of whether or not to implement an ERP system. While we could have continued with inexpensive point solutions, we realized that we didn’t have an abundance of data. If we waited another three or four years, we'd have more data and would likely spend millions of dollars on data conversion. We also didn’t have solidly established policies and procedures in place. Again, if we waited, we might require a significant change-management initiative to get everyone on board with a new system. During 2007, we implemented an ERP system, integrating our admissions, registration, financial aid, business office, grants management, and advancement functions. We clearly defined the rules and processes in each functional area have been. Data integrity across university functions has improved significantly.

EL. How did you get the trustees to go along with this major IT investment?

ED. Spending $500,000 for an administrative system that we didn't need was a hard sell at first to some of our trustees. Ultimately, they were convinced by our calculations that waiting to implement an ERP system might mean spending upwards of another $3 million in the long run. Another convincing argument was that by putting in place an ERP system that met industry standards, the regional accrediting bodies could check that box in our favor. Rather than relying on a homegrown system to safeguard our data, an industry-leading ERP system offered better security standards for sensitive data such as financial aid records.

EL. How are you handling each financial milestone for the new building?

ED. We don't typically breakup contracts by certain payments on certain delivery dates for certain percentage of project completion. We have payments per quarter or at the end. When it comes to IT vendors, we're withholding a 15 percent retainer until the completion of the testing and results all says satisfactory. This approach protects us financially from the risk of a vendor not knowing if what they have installed works or not.

EL. As a former CFO for a software company, how did you know if the dollars you spent really provided for the appropriate return?

ED. Even today, I continue to ask myself the same questions:  Are we getting the capability we truly need from our IT investment? Are we paying for many bells and whistles we'll never use? We not only pay upfront for the systems, but we have to invest time and money in training employees how to use the system, which might have more functionality then what you need. Organizations, unfortunately, tend to more than what they need. Vary rarely do we buy systems that won't meet our needs. We buy technologies beyond our needs for several reasons: the salesperson has done a great selling job or operational managers push for a certain system because it is a win-win to have all these features, most of which they'll never use.

Paying for things we don't need or we'll never use is a hard decision to reconcile.  If you're meeting your goals, than an ROI might prove that you did a good job. That's not enough. We need to understand the true costs of our investments. In other words, have we overspent and created on-going costs the organization has to bear.  That's our biggest concern.

Interview conducted by Elizabeth Ferrarini at elizabethferrarini@yahoo.com