Customer story · West Valley - Mission Community College District
A community college district helps develop a new purchasing solution
West Valley–Mission Community College District worked with Evisions Professional Services to build a fully customized FormFusion purchase order template, and the work became a new solution Evisions now offers other institutions.
Saratoga, California
2-year institution
FormFusion and Professional Services
- POs with the right lookPurchase orders customized to the look the district wanted.
- More time for ITFewer calls give IT staff more time to serve the district.
- The right data on every POCustomized data is pulled into purchase orders.
West Valley - Mission Community College District at a glance
1964
Founded
17,000
Students
782
Faculty and staff
218
Undergraduate programs
2
Campuses
01
The challenge
One purchase order, three departments to satisfy
West Valley–Mission Community College District (WVMCCD), in northern California, knew it needed to do something to improve its purchase orders. The POs didn’t have the look the district wanted, and couldn’t pull in all of the information required from various sources.
WVMCCD could not accomplish this in Banner by Ellucian without modifying the baseline code for the process. The district had been using FormFusion to generate POs and purchase requisitions, yet still required more flexibility to pull in and display the information its Purchasing, Warehouse, and Accounts Payable departments needed.
Three audiences
Purchasing, Warehouse, and Accounts Payable each needed a clear, concise PO.
Baseline code in the way
Banner alone would have meant modifying the baseline code for the process.
Information from many sources
The PO couldn’t pull in everything required from the various sources.
“We thought about just using the Banner PO format, but we wanted to use a format that worked best for our District.”
Brigit Espinosa · Executive Director of General Services
02
The solution
They asked. Professional Services built it.
WVMCCD didn’t know if it was even possible to get what it wanted out of FormFusion. So the district asked. It turned out that a fully customized PO template was possible.
The district worked with an engineer on the Evisions Professional Services team to outline everything it wanted, and didn’t want, in its POs. The wants included reduced spacing 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 show what it had in mind. Starting with the Banner layout, the engineer began a lengthy trial-and-error process to build a custom purchase order template. It took a lot of communication, by phone and email, to keep the process and the progress moving forward. There were challenges along the way, but both sides carefully reviewed and resolved each issue as it arose.
In the end, it took about 6 months from the first discussion to completed implementation. The district can now process POs within Banner and use the distribution features of FormFusion, but produce output that fits its specific needs.
| Before | With Evisions |
|---|---|
| The Banner PO format, or modified baseline code | A custom template, with POs still processed within Banner |
| POs missing information from the sources required | POs that display the additional information each department needs |
| More phone calls to the IT department | Fewer calls, and more IT time for the district community |
“
Evisions was outstanding with providing great customer service to my District. As the customer, they made us feel like we are truly valued.
Ron Smith · Executive Director of IT, West Valley – Mission Community College District
03
The results
A fix for one district became a solution for others
The specially configured PO solution, with its ability to display additional information, has decreased the number of phone calls to the IT department, giving IT staff more time to provide additional service to the district community.
Not only did the process result in a beneficial solution for WVMCCD, it paved the way for Evisions Professional Services to offer a new solution to other institutions: the FormFusion Purchasing Solution.
A PO built to fit
A customized layout, with POs still processed within Banner.
More on every order
Additional information pulled in from the sources required.
Fewer calls to IT
IT staff have more time to serve the district community.
A new offering
The work became the FormFusion Purchasing Solution.
More customer stories
What other institutions changed
Southern Illinois University
Electronic billing that students actually open
An average of 26,000 tuition bills a cycle moved from print and post to electronic delivery, saving the university more than $88,000 a year and giving students 24/7 access to their bills.
FormFusionFinance
Southern Illinois University
1098-T production without the January scramble
Bringing 1098-T production back in house from a contractor saves over $20,000 a year. Five staff had spent about two months preparing the data; the process now takes 60 percent less time.
FormFusionFinance
North Orange County Community College District
Reporting for a whole district from one secure source
Every department across the campuses had been building its own reports or hiring consultants. The district now runs centralized, secure reporting, with training built for more than 300 users.
ArgosInstitutional ResearchIT
Your turn
Bring us the project you keep putting off
Tell us what your team needs built, converted, or cleaned up. We will scope it with the people who will do the work.
Ellucian Partner Award
2025: Customer First
Ethos Connected
since 2020
Ellucian partner
22 years