Cloud Horizons: Hillsborough County Public Schools Infor ERP Transformation

By: RPI Tech Connect   November 5, 2024

In the final installment of our Cloud Horizon series, RPI Tech Connect dives into the drivers pushing K-12 institutions toward cloud technology. Join us as we sit down with Bob St. Ledger from Infor and Rick Laneau from Hillsborough County Public Schools, an RPI client, to uncover firsthand the impact of cloud technology on the education sector.

Hear directly from Rick about Hillsborough’s journey to the cloud and how this transformation is meeting their unique needs, from streamlining operations to addressing budget constraints. Discover the strategic advantages of the cloud for K-12 and how RPI’s guidance has supported a smooth transition, empowering Hillsborough County Public Schools to thrive in today’s evolving educational landscape.

Interested in listening to this episode on another streaming platform? Check out our directories.

Met Today’s Guest, Rick Laneau

Rick Laneau is the General Manager, IT at Hillsborough County Public Schools. He has over 40 years of experience in Information Technology (IT) within education. For the past seven years he has served as the General Manager of Information Technology for Hillsborough County Public Schools (HCPS), where he is responsible for providing leadership in cross-functional activities, tackling the transition from mainframe legacy to Cloud based applications.

He started with HCPS straight out of the University of South Florida with his degree in Management Information Systems. Beginning as a systems programmer, he has held various positions, and served for 14 years as Data Center Manager responsible for IT operations of the eighth largest school district in the country. The position included acquisition, implementation, and management of enterprise hardware and software within the district’s data center.

Meet Your Host, Chris Arey

Chris Arey is an experienced B2B marketing professional with nearly a decade of working in content creation, copywriting, SEO, website architecture, corporate branding, and social media. Beginning his career as an analyst before making a lateral move into marketing, he combines analytical thinking with creative flair—two fundamental principles required in marketing.

With a Bachelor’s degree in English and certifications from the Digital Marketing Institute and HubSpot, Chris has spearheaded impactful content marketing initiatives, participated in corporate re-branding efforts, and collaborated with celebrity influencers. He has also worked with award-winning PR professionals to create unique, compelling campaigns that drove brand recognition and revenue growth for his previous employers.

Chris’ versatility is highlighted by his experience working across different industries, including HR, Tech, SaaS, and Consulting.

About RPI Tech Connect

RPI Tech Connect is the go-to podcast for catching up on the dynamic world of Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP). Join us as we discuss the future of ERPs, covering everything from best practices and organizational change to seamless cloud migration and optimizing applications. Plus, we’ll share predictions and insights of what to expect in the future world of ERPs.

RPI Tech Connect delivers relevant, valuable information in a digestible format. Through candid, genuine conversations and stories from the world of consulting, we aim to provide actionable steps to help you elevate your organization’s ERP. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or new to the ERP scene, our podcast ensures you’re well-equipped for success.

Tune in as we explore tips and tricks in the field of ERP consulting each week and subscribe to RPI Tech Connect below.

Transcript

Chris Arey
In the final installment of our Cloud Horizons Public Sector Series, we’re zooming in on K-12. Joined by Hillsborough County Public Schools, tune in as we explore how cloud tech helped the Florida-based school district enhance its operations.

Chris Arey
This is RPI Tech Connect and we are back for yet another exciting discussion. I’m your host Chris Arey and this is part three of our Cloud Horizons Public Sector Series. For today’s episode, we’re focusing on education and how cloud technology is transforming the way schools operate. From addressing infrastructure challenges to retooling administrative processes, cloud solutions are having a huge impact in the K-12 space.

To help us explore this further, I’m thrilled to welcome two guests today. Bob St. Ledger from Infor and Rick Laneau from Hillsborough County Public Schools, one of RPI’s clients. Bob, welcome back. Rick, welcome to the program.

Rick Laneau
Thank you.

Bob St. Ledger
Yeah, thank you.

Chris Arey
It’s wonderful to have you both on here with me today. Before we dive into today’s topic, could you give our listeners a quick introduction to your, you know, about your background, particularly within K through 12 and cloud technology? Bob, we can start with you.

Bob St. Ledger
Yeah, again, thanks Chris and Rick. I’m excited to be here. I’m part of the public sector strategy team, and I focus on a lot of segments within the public sector. We’re going to be talking today about K -12, and that’s one of the big sweet spots that Infor provides solutions to the K-12 industry. again, and I’ve worked a lot with Rick, our next speaker, and he’s been part of our public sector industry council for many years. So again, exciting to have Rick on with us.

Chris Arey
Thanks, Bob. Rick?

Rick Laneau
Yeah, it’s great to be here. I’ve dedicated my entire career to Hillsborough County Public Schools. I started as assistant programmer supporting an IBM mainframe and I’m proud and a little bit embarrassed to say I’ve reached this milestone in my life, my fourth decade of service. You know, I’ve had a variety of titles including data center manager for 14 years. I spent a couple of years as the IT office of compliance. The last six years I’ve been a general manager by information technology.

I did spend the first two and a half years sitting at the sea level as a GM role until a Chief Technology Officer position was created, to which I now currently report. As for the ERP experience, I was one of the two project managers responsible for successfully implementing the original Lawson program back in early 2000s. Additionally, I oversaw the implementation of our imaging solution we’re still using to date around the same time period.

There’s cloud though, our district has been leveraging cloud resources for over a decade. We start with the Microsoft storage and Azure infrastructure as a service utilizing the various applications hosted on either AWS and Azure. Recently, we’ve migrated over to Infor, which we’ll talk about today, and the human capital management as well as cloud suite financials and the single tenant version of payroll and workforce management. That’s plenty to start with, I guess.

Chris Arey
No, thanks Rick. That was a, I appreciate you sharing that background. I didn’t know you had spent 40 years at Hillsborough, is that right?

Rick Laneau
Yeah, little long. That’s why I say it’s a little hard to imagine in one place for that long. But this is my 41st year in technology and never was an educator, always been IT trained.

Chris Arey
Awesome. Well, I’d love to hear your perspective today. And with that, I think we can jump right in. I hear K-12 schools are facing a number of challenges with aging infrastructure and tight budgets and of course, evolving educational needs. So Rick, throughout your experience, how have you been addressing these issues and how was it impacting Hillsborough? Or how was it?

Rick Laneau
I should have started with that. We’re also, to give you some background, we’re the seventh largest nation in the nation’s seventh largest school district, I should say, the nation, with over 220 ,000 students and over 24 ,000 employees. Historically, we’ve dealt with funding issues across the district and IT has never been at the top of any of the list for funding. Even our five -year hardware refresh plan was put on hold for several years.

So we struggled to keep our data center running with the of our HR payroll and finance applications, primarily due to the limited staff resources available for the span of required resources. It’s amazing from the mainframe to open systems and networking, know, staff turnover and retirements add additional strain. So it’s hard to keep staff. And as you guys are aware, even in the private sector, it’s been hard to maintain technical staff in the last three years. So you can imagine from a school district that pays a fraction what that’s like.

Another issue we face is the time it takes to procure hardware. If we need to expand our storage or capacity, our procurement timeline from initial requests to bid, to board approval, to delivery can exceed four months. So capacity planning becomes a real critical issue. So it’s been fun times working with the different problems that we have. All that being said, when COVID hit us, I believe our average personal computer age was around eight years old.

We had to scramble to initially hand out over 50 ,000 personal computers for remote access for students and staff. Overnight, our instructional staff had to pull together and create online curriculum in the cloud -based learning management system. Fortunately, we had just procured one and got it up and running about six months before COVID hit us. So the evolving education needs changed overnight for all districts across the country. So I’m sure other districts have the same issues we’re facing today.

Chris Arey
You said you had to issue personal computers to students as well? Wow. Okay. Well, I hope that, you know, those are some complex sounding challenges and I’m sure that, you know, COVID was nothing anyone was prepared for, but I’m hoping that maybe some of these challenges are things of the past now since you’re on the cloud, is that right?

Rick Laneau
Yes, absolutely. Definitely. Unfortunately, not all our systems are off the mainframe yet. We must maintain some of the systems for retention for a little bit longer. But the cloud solution provided such great assistance, I’ll say. There are a few things that kept me up at night and continue to, but the cloud addressed them. We’ll go into them probably later, but like disaster recovery.

I’ll say one of the top two in my mind is disaster recovery and security enhancements because…You know, being from a district here in Florida, know, anything that we’re in area prone for hurricanes. you know, now that we’re in the cloud, geographical redundant locations, you know, mitigates this challenge.

So I don’t even have to worry about that anymore. Security enhancements, know, info, info possesses significant financial resources to support their solutions, enabling them to provide and sustain enhanced levels of application and network security that, you know, districts can’t, can’t keep up to speed with. So.

Those are just two examples, we’ll start with, that made our lives much easier and I sleep much better.

Chris Arey
Yeah. That’s something I didn’t even think about there, know, having your on-premise system in an area where you have real, you know, weather risks all the time. Like, you don’t have to worry about that anymore now, is that right? Am I understanding you correctly?

Rick Laneau
That’s correct. I mean, we basically have our data centers on our third floor, so I never worry about flooding in downtown Tampa. But if you don’t have electricity getting to that building, they turn it off, it’s kind of hard to maintain.

Chris Arey
Wow. Well, it sounds like the transition to cloud technology couldn’t have come at a better time. Thanks for that, Richard. Sorry, Rick. And Bob, from your perspective, what are the main reasons school districts like Hillsborough are moving to the cloud? What do you see from your perspective?

Bob St. Ledger
Yeah, and a good question. Actually, I want to kind of reiterate some of the comments that Rick just made. Like, certainly two of big ones are the disaster recovery as well as security enhancements. You from a disaster recovery standpoint, organizations don’t have the staff today to make sure they always have their backups done in a timely manner or if there’s some kind of a crazy storm or in the West, we have more fire issues than storms.

But same kind of thing, like you have to be able to ensure that you have backup plans, backup data centers, all that set up for you. thing I’ll comment too is like security enhancements and stuff. For the most part, the on -premise legacy applications have their own series of security challenges. Keeping up to date with whatever patches and releases are there is a big ordeal. When you can stop worrying about that, frees your staff up to do things that are more important really for your K -12 school district in particular. The other thing I’ll add too, Ricky also mentioned

Trying to procure hardware is a challenge. When you go to the cloud, you really don’t worry about hardware anymore because you can have expansive ways to add and decrease needs based on the people using the application. So again, those are some of the, I’d say more technical reasons for moving to the cloud and making sure your K -12 district is in the cloud. And again, I also want to add, you’re number seven in the country. That’s huge. You guys have a demand set, a huge application. I think the cloud made a lot of sense for you.

Rick Laneau
Yeah, but. Yeah, Bob, that number four, that hardware capacity planning, or I call it capacity on demand, is what the cloud really provides. That was my third. After security enhancements, that’s my third because being able to forecast out what you’re going to need no longer is concern of mine because you’ve already got shared resources, you guys can turn it up in the cloud and turn it down, where we have to wait even, think of it from delivery aspects. So when you need it, it’s there.

Chris Arey
Yeah, and Bob, you mentioned something there that I’ve heard a lot about recently too. And it’s this, it’s the way that updates are deployed. It sounds like they happen like in the background, non disruptive to people’s work days. there anything you can share there?

Bob St. Ledger
Yeah, it’s a good question. Of course, every month there are periodic updates for critical issues that may have been occurring. But generally, I think a lot of software vendors like ourselves go to twice annual major enhancement releases which get deployed and passed out. So after we are fully tested and QA them, then we make them available to the clients and they can toggle them on and off so they don’t have to turn them on until they’re ready for them.

But certainly, all that happening behind the scenes is a big change to… having to find your servers, apply your patches, make sure it’s the right patch, and then repeat everything two days later when the new patch comes out. So again, all this is happening behind the scenes. think Rick can probably testify that that’s going to give his team time to do other things that are more critical to the district.

Rick Laneau
We’ll agree it a lot Bob, in some areas we might have a little gray area. mean, changes are changes. To your point though, behind the scene ones, the operating system level, why take those for granted? Once you get to the updates twice a year, we still have to do some testing and anything that we’ve customized. So, you know, I don’t want your listeners to think that it all goes away, but if 70 % of it goes away, that’s a win.

Bob St. Ledger
Mm.

Chris Arey
That’s nice. Yeah, that’s great insight. Now, Rick, I understand that Hillsborough County Public Schools recently transitioned to InforClouds Week. think that was January of 2024. Can you walk us through the early stages of this journey? You know, what were some of the immediate challenges you faced and what was that process like for you?

Rick Laneau
It was a long journey for us. It’s going to be different for every corporation though. Some of them I’m actually jealous of because it’d be probably straightforward and easy with less customizations. I’d love to work for one of the simple ones. our migration was, like I said, it’s not typical. We were one of the handful of original loss and customers running their ERP on a three tiered platform, including a mainframe.

In addition, we were so back level in the software version, had to complete two conversions to get to the cloud supported version. That was on us. To further complicate the legacy system, we had over 400 custom programs that we replaced Lawson with that we addressed and built ourselves. So the straightforward part is establishing cloud environments. You do the subscription, we opted for production, test, and training environments. So three environments for each. One for the cloud suite financials, the human capital management.

Both of those were done in the multi -tenant environment, which I highly recommend. WFM, which is workforce management module, and Lawson V10, we did those in single-tenant environment so we could take some of our customizations with us as a stepping stone to get to that multi -tenant. So that being said, I want everybody to understand, you know, we’re not the one and done type. We were quite a complicated situation that we had to get out of and get on a supported version.

You know, the Infor resources were contracted for the implementation and conversion of our historical data. We also had, you know, over 20 years of data in these data files that had to be converted. The Infor contract included a project manager and we began back actually in 2018. So that’s how long this project has for us due to our uniqueness. You know, Infor supplied their standard scripts and, you know, all their experts for the configuration and training.

You know, over the implementation, we did several mock go lives that we completed. Like I said, they converted over the 20 years of data revealing areas that needed to be addressed through software and process adjustments. There was multiple to the reasons causing delays besides COVID. In some instances, we even lost subject matter expertise on our team within the district that added to the project complexities. Overall.

Our district was able to reduce the number of customizations by at least 75 % at our actual go live. Part of the transition though, right the year before we went live with the final push to go live, we brought in an independent company to complete a review. The CFO at the time wanted to see a review of the project and see what the delays were. Suffice it to say at that time we were able to bid for staff augmentation to assist with the tasks the district is required to complete. and maintained. So in November, last November, actually November 23, the district issued the bid for staff augmentation services. RPI was awarded that bid in May of 2024.

However, with the importance of the Go Live with procurement requirements, the district began to use RPI expertise to help address production issues as soon as we went live, right as Infor’s contract was ending. So we had Infor contract it up through the two months after Go Live, and then we’re going to run it from that point forward. So our PI is critical from that point forward to assist us.

Chris Arey
Okay. That’s awesome. It sounds like some unique challenges you faced there and it sounded like you were quite thorough too though. Did I hear multiple test environments? Is that right?

Rick Laneau
Yes, we use three, which is usually people only have two. We have a third one we actually use for training. So we have a test, a training, and a production.

Chris Arey
That’s great to hear. Something that we encourage here at RPI and have during implementation, post implementation, basically at any stage is facilitating training. So you said RPI won the staff augmentation bid and began that in May. I imagine there’s been some training involved in that. Is that true?

Rick Laneau
Yes it has. Actually they started prior to May. I mean that was the main contract but like I said for some of the procurement things as we transitioned over to the Go Live in January and right thereafter some of the critical things we had to deal with they were not helping us out. Also now and going forward, I mean they’re weekly with each of our functional areas working with our subject matter experts, training them and doing knowledge transfer directly to them.

So that’s been a great assist. With their experience and knowledge of the product, it’s really key to our success.

Chris Arey
I’m always happy to hear good things about the RPI services team from clients. So thank you for that, Rick. Earlier, you had mentioned retooling staff and updating some processes. You mentioned the 75 % customization reduction. How did your team approach this, and what role did RPI play in getting that to that happen?

Rick Laneau
Well, at the time, was prior to the conversions and the customizations were prior to the RPI engagement with us. So, Infor really worked with us on those. Most of the jobs that we ran over, we’re still running Lawson. So, that’s part of our, it’s like a two-step approach. We’re still using Lawson now v10 in the cloud. It’s no longer on-premise. So, we do eliminate all the frustrations and problems that we have on-premise. maintenance, but we couldn’t walk away from all the customizations we have. So, Infor helped us direct those.

Now that we’re live, and let’s just say that was the first phase, is to get our up and running on a supported version. That was the main mission. It’s hard to push that through at the executive level because from the end-customer level, they’re still getting the same AP checks and payroll checks and finances are getting done externally, you don’t get to see the risks that we’re having behind the scenes with code that’s not supported. So phase two now is going to be, okay, how do we make that efficiency improved? You know, we were already coming from a loss in system that was online. So now it’s how do we make that more modern, start getting into mobile applications, start being able to change that front end of the interface so it’s more pleasing to the customer.

So that’s where RPI we’ll come along and start using the tools that they have experience with and working alongside our subject matter experts. They’ll be guiding us into making it more efficient. I’ll thank you.

Chris Arey
Thanks for clarifying that. Yeah. I’m glad you mentioned it too. you know, getting to the cloud is not the end all be all, it’s just step one. And around these parts, once an organization has gone live on CloudSuite, we begin what we like to call the day two optimization, which is like the activities that you’re talking about here. We’re really trying to maximize the value of this, of this new, these new applications that you’ve installed. You know, it’s making those fine tune adjustments and getting things to really improve.

Rick Laneau
Well, and I’ll add to that too, Chris. mean, some of them aren’t even just fine-tuning. Sometimes it’s just the expertise and knowledge is like, well, why did you do it this way when this way is so much easier? So it’s directing you to something with experience. Whereas, you know, as we’re looking at it or evaluating our process, it may be a major tune than just a fine tune. It could be something that really makes it more effective immediately.

Chris Arey
That’s actually, and we’ll get to this later in our discussion here, but a previous guest had mentioned like you don’t know what you don’t know. And that’s the value that you get when you bring in experts to kind of take a look at your system and say, like to describe what you just said there, but you’re doing it this way and that way it works, but it can be done faster and more efficient and probably in a more streamlined way. So thank you. Thank you for sharing that there.

Bob St. Ledger
If I just add to the whole, I love the idea of staff augmentation because I think something that often clients forget and implementation partners forget is that and his team have a day job. So, and it’s not just to go to the cloud, that’s part of what they’re doing. So, you really have to make sure that you have the staff that can help with the cloud migration, but also keep the lights on and keep doing the things you need to do until you’re in the cloud. So, Rick, you’re probably at a double shot of work going on there for a long time.

Rick Laneau
Yeah, I think that’s strong and worth mentioning. I mean, in our particular implementation, and when somebody looks at the timelines and says, happened to the timeline? You know, we didn’t backfill our position. So none of our teams, functional or technical, actually stopped their day job to your point. So we were running production through it all the time. And sometimes, know, obviously production took priority over the project.

So that did add to, and nothing stopped changing across those years. You know, any new statue we have to change our existing system in order to keep going with it. So it was interesting. I do recommend, if at all possible, obviously, any new engagement, you backfill a position and free up a unit to dedicate to a conversion type.

Bob St. Ledger
And by just to like a funny story, I was talking to a client last week who went live on HCM payroll and WFM in 12 months. And 12 months is like, no, one ever does in 12 months. And I said, I congratulate him on that. And they said, well, we will never do it again. So they’re in the process again, their own staff of mutations, they’re going to go for the next phase. And again, that was all our HCM stuff, the FSM, haven’t touched it, but they just, it was overwhelming. So it’s a lot to expect.

Rick Laneau
Hahaha. Yeah, I like Chris’s day two. I’m going to start coining that, using that instead of our phase two, because it really is a day two. It’s, okay, now we’re here. Okay, now it’s a.

Bob St. Ledger
Hahahaha.

Chris Arey
Yeah, thank you. It wasn’t me who came up with it, but somebody at RPI said it and now it’s this internal thing, that’s what we call it. But I’ve been slowly inserting it into outward facing things. So I’m glad you’re a fan. I’ll relay that back.

Rick Laneau
It might be year two for us, but we’ll get going.

Chris Arey
That’s great. Well, I appreciate you both speaking to the benefits of staff augmentation. You know, we’re happy to provide those services here at RPI. Bob, so a couple of questions for you. You know, we’ve heard about Hillsborough’s account with transitioning to the cloud and life after going live. How does CloudSuite help schools optimize their operations and what does it offer beyond just being an ERP?

Bob St. Ledger
Yeah. I’d say a lot of this, good question, a lot of this ties back to what used to be called back office because the exciting financials, general ledger, even HCM payroll, that’s never that exciting for the teachers or the people in the front lines, et cetera. But if you don’t have a strong backbone run by a team like Rick’s running, then you don’t have modernization and the capabilities do a lot more for your frontline workers. So I think that’s the big part that people often forget about.

You really have to modernize and have a platform that’s going to take you into the future, because they don’t have that to begin with around financials, around procurement, around HCM, around workforce management stuff. Then when your workers and your teachers, your administrators, even your students are trying to access capabilities in the internet, if you don’t have the backbone, then they have no way to access that as well.

Chris Arey
Yeah, that’s great. And it reminds me of something. myself and the rest of the marketing team at RPI, we attended a conference in Boston last week. And one of the presenters was sharing a story about the software that his company deploys. he started his presentation with, raise your hand if your parents have more than one TV remote. And I was like, what? Where is he going with this?

It’s like, your hand if your parents have more than five and like, know, a couple of people’s hands went up. It’s like, where’s he going? And then what it came down to is it like the software that he had. I think that, you know, in for cloud suite plays the same role. it like, with this tool, you only need one remote. And I think ERP is the same, know, in for CloudSuite ERP is the same here. It’s like, you can manage and have greater visibility into everything from one place. So I share that.

Chris Arey
I hope that it sounds relevant to you, but when I heard it, that’s what immediately clicked in my mind.

Rick Laneau
I can’t wait to get to that day myself. I mean, like I said, I’m in my fourth decade, until internally, once we get to the point where we do have the data and keep in mind, so this is our financial data. Now as a school district, now we want to fold in the student data as well. So capabilities are there and that goes into that day two. Now that we’re here, how do we move that forward? So we get that single pane of glasses, the old term we used to use.

Chris Arey
Nice. Well, Richard, I know that it’s still early, but Hillsborough has been live. What kind of results are you seeing or what are you hoping for and how has this transition helped streamline your operations?

Rick Laneau
Yeah, I’m hoping for exactly what you guys just talked about. We’re still, I mean, it’s relatively new since it’s January. We haven’t even made it through this fiscal year in the challenges we face, part of it was data conversion.

So as we get across and we’re going back so far, our immediate challenge was reconciling some of the financials, not due to anything on the system, but… you know the decision we made is to keep our production legacy system running while the conversion was taking place and to convert 20 plus years of data in different manual steps it was about a three week process so we had to go back and reconcile and that’s where RPI really came in critical to reconcile some of the financial records because what we had to do is those that didn’t get converted we had to then identify and bring back into the current system, the new system so…

We’re still working through some growing pains there. And then we’re starting to look into the reporting. So I think when you talk to our other functional area leads or when you hear from them, when we get back in another month or so, that’s when we’ll start to see, you know, once we get through this initial auditing period, I’ll say, we’ll start to see the light at end of the tunnel and then be able to take advantage. It’d be interesting to have an interview in about another six months to see where we’re at, to see how great that is.

Chris Arey
Okay, yeah. Well, it sounds like we’re pacing well and you’re optimistic about where things are headed and already seeing some great outcomes. So thank you for sharing that with us. We are getting close to time now, but as Bob knows, before we conclude, I’d to ask my guests to impart one piece of wisdom or an actionable takeaway regarding today’s topic.

So Rick, I’d to start with you. If you could share one piece of advice to school districts considering a move to the cloud, what would it be?

Rick Laneau
One, I can’t limit it to one, I’m trying to think. To me, mean right now what we’re doing is kind of a little backwards because now we’re mapping our existing processing. If you want some practical advice from me, the first step is to make sure you have your existing processes mapped. And not even so much mapped, but the documentation of why something exists. All right, it’s one thing, I’ll tie it together with a couple of things, but why something exists is the key to success.

If it’s not required by regulatory or provided added efficiency, eliminate it. Get rid of that process. I look at customizations as a four letter word, right? Multi-tenant cloud will improve your sleep. That’s an assessment on top of it, but map your processes. I’ll end with one. Go ahead. I was going to end with one.

Chris Arey
I’m sorry to interrupt you. That was a great one-liner right there. Multitenant will improve your sleep quality, is that what you said?

Rick Laneau
Yeah, that’s exactly what I said. That’s my vision. Okay, because I mean for those people, know, the end customers won’t understand that but technical people that are listening to this will. And I’ll end with one other thing. Last comment, not a suggestion, but it’s one of my favorites. You know, I saw, you know, Elon Musk in an interview and he said something like, of the worst things an engineer can do is to make a process more efficient that should not exist at all. And that just rhymes in my ears because

Chris Arey
Ha.

Rick Laneau
When I go back and look over the last six years, when we start looking at something, it’s like, why were we doing that in the first place? Well, it was something we did 23 years ago. Well, it’s not pertinent anymore. it’s really if you mix. So back to this all wraps up into one thing, map your existing processes and make sure you need them and make sure what they are. And then you look at the cloud solution and cross reference into them. So that’s my end.

Chris Arey
That’s fantastic, thank you. So many good sound bites there too. I’m have to quote you on that, Rick. Hope that’s all right.

Rick Laneau
Well, I know I probably didn’t get Elon Musk quote exactly right, but it’s up.

Chris Arey
Bob, anything to add?

Bob St. Ledger
Yeah, I’ll just add that. Those are great points, Rick. Maybe just add to that is that, I the cloud is here. So, you know, a lot of times the public sector takes a bit for those organizations to really migrate to the cloud. But I think the cloud is here. I think the next one to five years, we’ll see the majority of K -12 organizations looking to cloud solutions, the ones that haven’t already. And they’ll have probably three to five, maybe 10 -year plan to get to the cloud. But I think that’s here.

So I’d say as you make your plans to go to the cloud and figure out what is most important to you, is it really trying to make sure you get rid of any customization might have from your own application? Maybe it’s focusing on your procurement practices. Maybe it’s providing better self -service and mobility for your employees so can do their HR capabilities, their benefits enrollment online and stuff. So those are the things. Really prioritize what it is you’d like to get done first as you lead into your year two, year three, or day two, day three, whatever you end up calling it.

Chris Arey
Well, great advice from both of you. Thank you so much for hanging out. For those of you joining us on the show today, if you have any questions about today’s discussion or you want to learn more about Infor CloudSuite, feel free to contact us. You can do so at [email protected]. Again, that’s [email protected]. This is RPI Tech Connect and I’m your host, Chris Arey. We’ll see you next time.

Bob St. Ledger
Thanks, Chris. Thanks, Rick. Bye.

Rick Laneau
Thank you.