Universiti Putra Malaysia GSM

Case Study

Introduction

The Graduate School of Management at Universiti Putra Malaysia (UPM - GSM) was established in 1997 to continue the effort previously undertaken by the Faculty of Economics and Management. Supported by a team of qualified multidisciplinary academicians with years in teaching experience, training and research activities; GSM is charting its course towards becoming a premier management graduate school in the region.

GSM offers full-time and part-time programmes - Master of Business Administration (MBA), Master of Management (MM), Master of Science (MSc) and Doctor oManagement of Philosophy (PhD). Currently, there are more than 1000 students studying at the graduate school, taught and supervised by 26 full-time academicians.

GSM also engages the services of part-time lecturers from the industry to teach its programmes. In addition, GSM is supported by more than 20 personnel in executing its administrative duties.

Challenge and Solutions

As one of the premier post graduate management school in Malaysia, UPM GSM faced the challenge of efficiently maintaining the management information pertaining to the students. This requirement raised the demand for a performance-oriented solution with rich functionalities to maintain diverse requirements.

The solution had to be capable of maintaining crucial information on the student management, with the flexibility to adapt to the dynamic business requirements of top class management education at the post graduate level.

The University Management System 3-tier architecture with object-oriented components and .NET framework are designed to address these complexities. The University Management System for UPM GSM includes the Student Admission Management, Course Management, Exam and Assessment Management, Student Accounting System and Student Portal systems which are integrated seamlessly to provide real time information to students, staff and faculty. This contributes significantly to better student services, where post graduate students are able to apply for their graduate degree programmes via the Student Portal System and the provision to interact with their appointed supervisors, who are able to provide guidance and advice to the students, enabling them to complete their rigorous research study within the stipulated time limit.

Infrastructure

UMS developed using Microsoft Technology, with 3-tier architecture where the solution is highly Reliable and scalable catering to business uplift. The solution’s application layer is developed in .NET technologies. It’s database layer runs on SQL Server 2000.

The utilization of a .NET object-oriented framework accelerated the development cycle allowing re-usable developed components. This Object Oriented and component-based concept needed to be highly flexible to meet dynamic administration business needs.

Benefits

The implementation of UMS brings unparalleled benefits to critical operations

• Performs mission critical operations and management functions to increase overall functionality.
• Processing of real-time student transactions to eliminate complex accounting work.
• Integrates data mining capabilities that provide the accessibility of real time key performances indexes for strategic decision-making.
• Maximizes technology investment by reducing Total Cost of ownership and improving Information Technology Investment per capita.
• Designed ready for rapid integration with existing third party financial applications.

Working with key campus administrative offices and the System Office service centers, Systems Development analyzes needs for new or enhanced systems, implements changes and improvements, contributes to application availability, and guarantees production reliability and accuracy.

Delivery of Enhancements and System Maintenance – On a periodic basis (every 6 months to 9 months), UMS works with campus and System Operations key users to prioritize requests for enhancements to the systems and mandatory maintenance of the systems. As such, the work plans are a flexible agreement between UMS and the key users regarding the work that will be performed in a planning period. Service level expectations encompass the amount of work accomplished, the quality of the work, and the interaction between UMS staff and key users in developing creative, optimal programming solutions.

Service Level Expectation of Systems Development – Complete work plans as agreed to between the key users and Systems Development teams. Work closely with key users to develop system requirements, seeking creative and optimal solutions that meet key users needs.

Recommendations

Moving forward, University Management System is focused on driving the constituent institutions to achieve greater business mobility with more user-centric approaches. As such, a fully integrated institutional system like UMS is able to rapidly integrate with existing management applications.

UMS believes that the ultimate accounting package should accommodate the way institutions approach the business of education. With its open architecture, UMS is engineered to incorporate new levels of collaborative services and to deliver personalization information to disparate users.

As the new student population is becoming increasingly consumerist, traditional institutions must find ways to effectively maintain the management system.