Osceola schools set July 2027 target to replace TERMS with CGI Advantage ERP

The School District of Osceola County on Tuesday laid out a 15‑month implementation plan to replace its TERMS legacy enterprise resource planning system with CGI Advantage, with a target go‑live of July 1, 2027 and a requirement that payroll processes run correctly in parallel before the board will approve launch.

"We will not go live if we cannot run a parallel payroll," said Peter Thorn, the district's chief information and technology officer, describing a validation plan that includes five parallel payroll runs and two retroactive payroll simulations to ensure pay and retro pay calculations match between systems.

Thorn said the move replaces a TERMS setup the district has used since 1998 with a cloud‑based, integrated platform meant to consolidate finance, human resources, payroll and budgeting and to eliminate paper workflows and conflicting "shadow systems." He said the district selected CGI following an RFP and site visits conducted with consultant Plante Moran and that the contract — negotiated late 2025 with outside intellectual property counsel — exceeds 200 pages to protect district interests.

The implementation will follow three phases Thorn described as "alignment" (first three months, verifying roughly 1,000 RFP requirements and configuring CGI), "deliver" (system configuration and iterative testing) and "achieve" (final testing and user acceptance). Thorn said the district will stand up four environments — production, development, testing and a sandbox — and use four‑week agile sprints with daily standups and ongoing testing rather than a waterfall deployment.

RSM, the district's internal auditor, will provide project oversight, Thorn said, and the district negotiated a year of post‑launch "hypercare" support from CGI rather than the vendor's standard three months to keep project teams intact and available after go‑live.

Board members asked detailed questions about training and change management. Thorn said CGI will begin training and then transfer responsibilities through a train‑the‑trainer model; the district will monitor readiness using metrics such as support tickets and site visits. "My biggest concern was communication and training to our staff. I just want to make sure that they are aware and the timing is perfect," said Ms. Castillo, a board member.

Thorn emphasized governance and stop‑gates: the executive steering team (Thorn, Sarah Graeber and Dr. Green) will make operational decisions and the board will grant the final approval to transition away from TERMS once the pre‑go‑live payroll checks are satisfied.

On data security, General Counsel Sara Walker Corrin and Thorn said district data will be stored in U.S.‑based, non‑co‑mingled vendor instances and that the district will receive SOC‑2 type audit reports. Thorn said the contract allows district audits of vendor systems and includes protections for backups, recovery and data access.

The implementation will also include an AI assistant — described in the presentation as "Samantha Plus" — that the district can train with its own materials and policies. Thorn said a district staffer will be assigned to continually train and update models so the agent uses district data rather than a canned vendor dataset.

The presentation traced the procurement history (RFI/RFP in 2024, selection of CGI late 2025), named partners Plante Moran and RSM in oversight and evaluation roles, and noted partnerships with Cornerstone and Workday for recruiting and learning management, which will integrate with the CGI platform in different ways.

Thorn and presenters repeatedly flagged implementation risk: "Forty percent of K‑12 districts still use legacy systems," he said, and among those that move to modern ERP systems, he cited industry data that about half fail without strong governance, requirements management and change management.

The next procedural steps are a project kickoff April 10, monthly updates to the board beginning in May, and continued alignment work in the first three months. Thorn said the district will bring a formal recommendation to the board for final go‑live approval only after the required payroll parallel tests are completed successfully.

No formal votes were taken during the workshop; the meeting included a procedurally announced executive litigation session to follow the workshop.

The district identified the ERP work as an enterprise‑wide transformation rather than an IT project, and Thorn said the board's oversight, strong executive sponsorship and continued vendor management are central to the plan's success.