Open Source or ERP ... why not both?

How we rolled our own ERP over time using open source code, ingenuity, one IT guy and a paper clip.

I used to imagine the existence of an entire underground civilization of computers locked away in dusty, damp, inhumane back room conditions, streaked with grease-monkey fingerprints, caked with flour and jammed with crumbs, or hiding amidst the junk just on the other side of the drip falling from the ceiling of the add-on shack. I imagined that one day, all these computers would realize that they weren't the only ones, that there were others out there, just like them, and they would form underground coalitions, pass surreptitious communications back and forth, and form a plan to unite and demand better work environments, unionized PCs for cleaner conditions.

Granted, this is a fantastical scenario, but I mention it now because in a sense, it's not so far from what is actually happening. What is ERP but a way to tie together previously separate processes into a unified whole?

It's funny how sometimes you learn the name for the system you've been using all along at work, and you suddenly develop a higher respect for what it does and how it came to be. When my supervisor started at our place of work, he was the IT department. The school was using Access to store student data, and was quickly realizing that it would not scale to meet the growing requirements of the business. Being as slim on budget as IT was on staffing, he pulled together a system using Open Source products: Linux on the mail server running Postfix, PostgreSQL database with user definitions and permissions set through the use of pgAdmin, and various PHP classes (including the PEAR framework) to build the Web Interface to allow employees access to student files from their offices in Grand Cayman, Orlando and Niceville, FL, and Standish, Maine, on whatever operating system platforms they were using (usually Windows). Add to that an online web portal running eGroupWare available to students wherever they may be, and what you get is the built-to-order beginnings of an ERP.

So, where do I see ERP in our system? To start, the nature of our company required that we be able to keep track of student information from wherever we were, because our students are so dispersed. Since we don't have our own teaching hospital, we have agreements with others throughout the US and UK to allow our students to do their clinical clerkships there. While some students stay at a particular hospital through their clinical science education, most of them travel to different locations. And since the administrative offices are in Florida while the college itself (where students attend their basic science classes) is in Grand Cayman, we could not be tied to a particular location. I see it this way: the student is what drives the process (giving that student their medical education and degree is the process). The IS is built to enable faculty and staff to do what they need to do to help keep that student's education on track, and all the systems functioning in order to create an environment to facilitate that. While our system is still not as all-inclusive as I would like, we are working toward building modules to reach that goal. I imagine our system works so well because it was built from the ground up and tailored to meet the needs at any given time. While that has caused some problems with keeping the larger picture in mind, all in all I'm proud to say that our system is highly successful.

As the school has grown, the IT staff has grown. Now, we have three of us full-time in the Oviedo office: the Director of IT (my supervisor), myself as software engineer and helpdesk overflow, and the helpdesk guy to assist employees and students with computer and online account questions and problems. We finally hired someone full-time in Cayman to handle IT issues there on campus, and he has a guy helping part-time. The Maine staff still relies on bringing in occasional IT help from a guy we have contracted to work hourly on an as-needed basis. I've been with the company now for about 2 1/2 years, and one thing I know for certain: there's gonna be changes ahead.