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District begins formal planning to replace aging business system; county Munis and Escape under review
Summary
MDUSD staff reported on an ongoing evaluation of the district’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, saying longtime BusinessPlus has performance and documentation issues and that the district is considering Escape or Contra Costa County’s Munis consortium as replacements.
Mount Diablo Unified School District staff reported June 25 on an ongoing study of the district’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and said the committee is leaning toward either Escape or the county’s Munis consortium as replacement options.
Background and scope: Robert Sidford and a cross-department ERP committee reported work that began in January to evaluate the district’s BusinessPlus system (in place since about 2003) for finance, payroll, HR, position control and other core administrative functions. The committee identified chronic setup problems, slow performance, heavy reliance on manual workarounds and insufficient documentation and vendor support.
Selection criteria: Committee criteria prioritize vendors with successful K–12 implementations, strong training and support, robust integration capabilities to work with existing systems, and reasonable total cost of ownership (licensing plus implementation and ongoing support). Sidford told the board “support, support, support” is the most critical element in vendor selection.
Options under consideration: Staff said two main replacement candidates are Escape (market estimate $1.5M–$1.6M for implementation) and Munis via a county consortium. Adrian Vargas said preliminary conversations with the county indicate ongoing costs could be significantly different between the two options and the county option may offer cost advantages through a consortium model. Staff said a decision could be brought to the board as early as the August meeting with an implementation schedule that would begin planning in 2025–26 and run to a July 1, 2027 projected full launch.
Next steps: Staff will finalize cost estimates, review consortium terms and return with a recommendation and implementation plan. The district said parallel operation of old and new systems would be likely during the transition and emphasized vendor support, documentation and training as priorities.
Provenance: ERP review and committee findings presented during agenda item 13.3 (transcript beginning at 3207.405).
