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The Collaborative for Higher Education Shared Services, or CHESS, is a nonprofit that employs a unique approach to transform the student experience and streamline administrative operations. The partners are Clovis Community College, Central New Mexico Community College, Northern New Mexico College, San Juan College, and Santa Fe Community College. The solution will align key business processes and systems using a more efficient, more secure, and fully integrated Enterprise Resource Planning system as the foundation. The college presidents serve on the CHESS Board of Directors to manage the needs of the diverse group and to ensure a true collaboration among all colleges in the decision-making process.

Enterprise Resource Planning is an integrated suite of software applications with a central database using the same platform to strategically share resources and information, such as accounting, student records, financial aid, etc., among the partner colleges to better serve students and their communities.ms79260929

The Cloud-Native Solution Will:

Transform the student experience.
Create common systems to support common business practices.
Give the colleges the ability to provide each other support across all disciplines as needed.
Improve student outcomes and better serve community needs.
Meet state-level directives for colleges and universities to collaborate, find efficiencies, and improve program quality for New Mexicans.
Allow participating colleges to assist and support each other beyond technical issues and operating processes.
Create standard operating processes and data definitions based on industry best practices without each college recreating the wheel.
Leverage resources to expand the system capacity of smaller colleges so they have access to quality services that they otherwise could never afford.
Encourage cross-institutional collaboration to reduce operating expenses.
Improve the student experience by increasing modernization, accessibility, and mobility resulting in higher enrollments and better student retention.
Increase college productivity, capacity, collaboration, and access to data and reporting.
Seamlessly share faculty, course offerings, staff, and skillsets across the colleges during implementation and ongoing system maintenance to address the significant difficulties of hiring specialized technical talent across the state.
Contain technology costs by leveraging economies of scale by together selecting a single cloud/SaaS system, allowing for modern technology currency and reducing the need for many third-party systems.

CHESS Shared Systems

Students

Recruitment, admissions, advising, enrollment, financial aid, billing, course scheduling, degree planning, records, curriculum management, alumni relations, customer relationship management.

Finance and Accounting

General ledger, accounts payable, accounts receivable, procurement, project finance, grant management, capital assets, work orders, financial reporting.

Human Resources and Payroll

Applicant tracking, employee records, compensation, benefits management, performance management, faculty contracts, training, risk management, time entry, payroll processing, position control.

Budget

Forecasting, budget preparation, capital planning, pperating budgets, capital budgets, budget adjustments.

Data Management, Security, Integrity

Increase college productivity, capacity, collaboration, and improved, shared business analytics and reporting tools.