Buying with confidence

Transformation of processes in education is seldom easy. I often involves complexity to unravel that helps identify what steps no longer serve the institution well.

Moving from old to new software solutions, re-aligning processes, changing work methods, training staff, and managing expectations, all require embracing new ways of working and letting go of the past. And at CCC, that is exactly the challenge they decided to embrace.

Central Community College (CCC) successfully used Ellucian Purchase to transform its purchasing processes. And while the implementation of Ellucian Purchase saved CCC time, money, and resources, the purchasing team continued to explore ways to improve the path to purchasing even further.

“More savings, faster turnaround times and transparent access to real-time data gave us the confidence to continue to push forwards” comments Carmen Taylor, Purchasing Manager at Central Community College, “we decided to deploy Ellucian Experience. Our old dashboard was serving us well and we loved that the whole campus was able to benefit, but we wanted better ” continues Carmen. As a college, we strive for better, and we demand the same from our purchasing system. We heard about Experience Purchase Cards at Ellucian Live in April, and we knew right away we wanted to be part of the early adoption group.”

Central Community College’s introduction to Ellucian Experience came at the perfect time. The team were looking for new ways to reduce costs and how to cut staff workloads associated with approval tasks, enabling people some time back in their day.

The legacy dashboards made it difficult for staff to conveniently access and to quickly action tasks.
In contrast, Ellucian’s SaaS based Experience environment slashed the time and money CCC were spending on internal IT system maintenance, and importantly released precious IT time, and
allowed the whole team to focus on making the buying journey more seamless for faculty and staff.

“Following Ellucian Live 2024, CCC joined the early adopter group. And we wasted no time learning the best ways to quickly deploy the new Experience cards” comments Carmen.

“Delivered with card templates, Ellucian Experience also provides the flexibility for customers to build and configure their own cards. CCC were delighted with the ability to finely tailor card features to
make feel bespoke for their users” comments Richard Forrest, Chief Product Officer, ESM
Solutions, “utilizing the pre-built purchase cards, we worked together to make finishing touches to
the cards, and to ensure they exceed CCC’s user expectations.”

“Ellucian Experience creates a centralized, secure dashboard. And it’s delivered in a way that works
best for the institution and its users,” continues Richard Forrest, Chief Product Officer, ESM
Solutions, “it’s easy to access Ellucian Purchase from Ellucian Experience, eliminating the need for
users to toggle between systems, something we all find creates user fatigue.” CCC now provides curated purchasing content that streamlines daily tasks for faculty and staff.

The previous service at the College linked to external resources. Ellucian Experience allows all user interactions to take place within the cards themselves, alongside the other applications faculty and staff want to see. The Purchasing team found it seamless to deploy Ellucian Experience cards, with users enjoying the transformed dashboards with just the right service features designed to support their work.

Ellucian Purchase Experience cards transform the purchase experience by enabling CCC to organize
and personalize buying experiences. Despite Central Community College’s use of Ellucian Experience being still relatively new, the benefits are already adding up. Collaboration between Finance and Purchasing is easier with the visibility of budget information right at the time users are making spend decisions. Knowledge that will help everyone at the College to focus the right resources to advance education.

“Ellucian Experience and Ellucian Purchase integrated with our Ellucian Colleague ERP, have transformed procurement operations” concludes Carmen.

“ESM congratulates CCC for the commitment to the early adoption group. They made great
contributions to the workshop discussions and showed a willingness to quickly iterate their ideas back at the campus” Joshua Faith, CEO, ESM Solutions comments “their team lived up to the Raider’s slogan of “let’s get to work” and inspired us and other institutions in the group.”

“As an award-winning Ellucian Build Partner, ESM is committed to continuously innovate our solutions to take full advantage of the dynamic SaaS tools available from Ellucian. Ellucian Experience is a great example of how we’re enabling institutions to deliver a better way to browse, shop, and buy,” concludes Josh.