[807] in magellan
Student eBill/ePay Discovery November Status Report
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Joanne M. Hallisey)
Thu Dec 12 08:46:49 2002
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Date: Thu, 12 Dec 2002 08:35:51 -0500
To: magellan@mit.edu, ebill@mit.edu
From: "Joanne M. Hallisey" <hallisey@MIT.EDU>
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November 2002 Status Report
Project name: Student Ebill/Epay Discovery Project
Project leader: Sandra Chauncey
Report date: 12/06/2002
Submitted by: Joanne Hallisey
Web URL: http://web.mit.edu/is/discovery/ebill/
Accomplishments past periods:
Examined several vendors for potential solutions. (infiNET,
CashNet/Informed Decisions, CommonFund)
Established a project plan.
Established a project notebook
Examined list of peer institutions and organizations for interviews.
Visit to BC. BC is considering a one year student billing pilot with
infiNET and Informed Decisions.
Met with FSS representatives, Debra Wiley and Bob, Casey, on November
27. to determine if they could play a role in the project.
Continued work on the financial analysis.
Discussed the implications of including a cashiering solution.
Discussed timeline and communications concerns for an implementation.
Goals for the coming period:
Need to build scenarios and flesh out the information about the
existing process and what problems they are trying to solve in order
to have a solid case for the ebill/epay solution.
Complete financial analysis.
Determine technical requirements.
Refine recommendations and work on the draft report.
Conduct informal student survey.
Begin to draft implementation timeline.
Next community milestone:
None.
Issues:
Some of the original vendors solutions considered have since gone out
of business. This has not affected the project other than to point
to the importance of choosing a solid vendor partner.
The hope is to be able to implement a solution in the summer of 2003.
Completing this intial work on time will be important in reaching
this goal.
This team has been investigating potential ebill/epay solutions for
nearly a year. It came together in November with a desire to focus
the work so that a recommendation can be made to the sponsor in
January 2003. A lot of initial work has been done. The bulk of the
remaining work will be in organizing the information gathered and
refining a solid recommendation.
Key learnings:
Early responses from peer institutions show an emerging tendency
toward infiNET Solutions in the ebill/epay market.
Introduction of consultants mid-project can have various effects.
This team has experienced the introduction consultants from other MIT
departments twice. The element of surprise should be avoided at all
costs. Introduction of consultants causes the team to step back and
reexamine its work to date with each new participant. The core
original team has been agile in their adjustment in both cases.
Team dynamics:
The team is the well established and has a good chemistry.
Additional comments:
None.
