The Challenge
West Valley – Mission Community College District, in northern California, knew they needed to do something to improve their purchase orders. They weren’t getting the look that they wanted and they weren’t able to pull in all of the information from the various sources required. WVMCCD could not accomplish this in Banner® by Ellucian without modifying the baseline code for the process.
WVMCCD had been using FormFusion to generate POs and purchase requisitions, yet they still required more flexibility to pull in and display the information that was needed to accommodate their Purchasing, Warehouse, and Accounts Payable departments. A purchase order had to be clear and concise for each department that viewed it.
The Solution
Being an Evisions customer, WVMCCD didn’t know if it was even possible to get what they wanted out of FormFusion. So, they asked.
It turned out that it actually was possible to create a fully customized PO template using FormFusion. They worked with an engineer on the Evisions Professional Services team to outline everything they wanted – and didn’t want – in their POs. The ‘wants’ included reduced spacing in order to fit the maximum number of items on one page, and to avoid creating multiple page POs unless necessary.
The district provided a template to help show what they had in mind. From there, starting with the Banner layout, the engineer began a lengthy trial & error process to build a custom purchase order template. It took a lot of communication between Evisions and WVMCCD, both phone calls and emails, to keep the process – and the progress – moving forward. There were certainly challenges along the way, but both sides would carefully review and resolve such issues whenever they arose.
In the end, it took about 6 months from the time WVMCCD and Evisions first began discussing the solution to when implementation was completed. Now, the district can process POs within Banner and use the distribution features of FormFusion, but produce output to fit its specific needs.
This specially configured PO solution, with its ability to display additional information, has decreased the number of phone calls to the IT department, giving the IT staff more time to provide additional service to the district community.
Not only did this process result in a beneficial solution for West Valley – Mission Community College District, but it paved the way for Evisions Professional Services to offer a new solution to Banner and Colleague* users: the FormFusion Purchasing Solution.
*SQL Server only.
“We thought about just using the Banner PO format, but we wanted to use a format that worked best for our District.”
“Evisions was outstanding with providing great customer service to my District. As the customer, they made us feel like we are truly valued. It is very refreshing to find an organization that demonstrates a ‘customer service’ dedication to putting the customer first.”