Volusia schools say ERP replacement on track: phase 1 payroll go-live planned for July 1

Volusia County School District technology and finance leaders briefed the school board on a major enterprise-resource planning (ERP) replacement project intended to modernize HR, payroll, timekeeping and finance systems.

Chief Technology Officer Matt **** and Director of Software and Systems Paul Metzger summarized a multi-year procurement and implementation process that ended with the district selecting Focus as the replacement vendor. The team told the board the Oracle/Crosspoint environment currently in use is effectively two legacy systems operating together and that the district needed a single, modern, supported ERP.

Implementation timeline and scope: the project is structured in two phases. Phase 1 covers HR, payroll and time-and-attendance and is scheduled to go live July 1; phase 2 will migrate finance functions (currently in older Oracle modules) and is scheduled for an April 2026 go-live. Metzger said the district has implemented project-management standards and is using Focus’s project-management office alongside district staff. He said data migration, gap analysis and integrations are in progress and that the first internal parallel test for payroll produced a matching gross and net payroll output between old and new systems.

Technical and scheduling constraints: the presenters described a range of implementation risks, including staff capacity (the district’s business applications team is supporting three administrative systems while implementing the new ERP), the need to coordinate timing with other divisions and the town-by-town schedules of other districts implementing Focus. They asked the board and other leaders to minimize concurrent software rollouts where possible and noted the typical “implementation dip” — a temporary drop in productivity while staff adjust to a new system — that may require extra training and support in the weeks following go-live.

Planned retirements of legacy software will lead to savings and reduce vulnerability, CTO staff said. The district expects to retire Crosspoint and remove several standalone systems once Focus is fully implemented. The team did not provide a single consolidated savings number at the workshop but said licensing costs for the current Oracle setup are materially higher than the single Focus license arrangement.

Board reaction: board members asked about gaps between district needs and Focus features and how district policy changes can interact with software timing. CTO staff said some policy-driven changes require programming and that, for technical or scheduling reasons, the district may delay some software-driven policy changes until after go-live to avoid rework. The board asked staff to flag any policy actions with material technical impacts so the board can weigh schedule consequences. No votes were taken; staff said the district currently is on schedule and on budget for the ERP work reported at the workshop.