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Lux Industries and the Ohio Education Association
Like many well-established organizations, the Ohio
Education Association was using legacy systems that were cumbersome and
a bit outdated. Fritz Fekete, OEA’s Director of Information Systems and
Research, says, “We couldn’t keep up with technology and it was putting
us behind the curve competitively. We needed to serve our members faster
and more efficiently.”
The answer to the challenge? First, develop an Enterprise IT Plan. Then,
design custom web-enabled systems as part of that plan.
The company for the job? Lux Industries. Says Fekete, “We chose Lux
Industries first for the Enterprise Plan, because we had been impressed
with their work elsewhere. After Lux delivered just what I wanted in
that plan, we thought ‘Who better to design the systems than the company
who already understands our vision?’”
About the Systems Themselves
After delivering a successful Enterprise Plan, Lux went to work
designing three systems for OEA. In each case, the first order of
business was gathering requirements from all the players at OEA – the
end users, the management, and the members themselves.
Membership Lookup System – OEA had always used the membership
processing system of the National Education Association, but it was
large, complex, and hard to navigate. “That NEA database had lots of the
data about our 130,000 members, but we couldn’t extract it easily or
quickly,” according to Fekete. Lux built web-based software that
duplicates OEA’s section of that large database and recreates it locally
–and automatically – each night on an OEA server. Add to that a web
interface for users, and what used to take days now takes only seconds.
Executive Information System – The EIS lets management and policy
makers examine a range of data and issues that affect OEA, from many
sources – from test scores, census data, and pupil population to the
financial system, membership system, and ongoing political efforts. Says
Fekete, “With the new web-based system, it’s easy for management to get
a quick look at what’s going on in our industry, and in our
organization.”
Balanced Scorecard System – OEA uses 65 different metrics to
measure how well the organization is performing. The Balanced Scorecard
System tracks and measures those metrics, and displays them in a
dashboard-style presentation. Because it’s a web-based system, it’s easy
for policy makers to see whether OEA is meeting its goals.
The Ohio Education Association – with about 130,000 members
– serves the public education employees of Ohio. Ninety percent
of OEA members are teachers, and those teachers depend on OEA to
influence education policy in government, to ensure equitable
salaries and benefits, and to foster an environment of
continuing education and student achievement. |
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“I’d have to say Lux
exceeded our expectations. They never missed a deadline, even
though we were always throwing changes at them. And, they got on
board with my vision for the IT organization and helped make it
a reality.” – Fritz Fekete, Director of Information Systems
and Research, Ohio Education Association |
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