By using CAMS Enterprise™, many community colleges already heeding President’s call to cut costs

Feb. 1, 2010 - PRLog -- St. Louis — February 1, 2010 — In last week’s 2010 State of the Union address, President Barack Obama urged Congress to pass a bill revitalizing community colleges, which he called “a career pathway to the children of so many working families.”   But he also made it clear that helping higher education is not a one-way street.

“And it's time for colleges and universities to get serious about cutting their own costs — because they too have a responsibility to help solve this problem,” the President added.

Several visionary community college administrators and IT heads have already installed on their campuses an advanced enterprise resource planning — or ERP — system that nationwide is saving millions of dollars in unnecessary computer hardware, software and maintenance costs.  By every measure, the system also increases productivity, reduces waste and shrinks carbon footprints from Goliath-sized to Cinderella dainty.

Sold by St. Louis-based Three Rivers System Inc., CAMS Enterprise™, as the product is called, is an innovative Web-based system built exclusively for higher education entirely on pure Microsoft® technologies.  By increasing performance and reducing IT costs by as much as 75 percent, CAMS Enterprise is outpacing formidable competitors like PeopleSoft and SunGard on its way to becoming the choice of forward-thinking, demanding and cost-conscious institutions.


Three Rivers Systems Inc. President and Founder Amir Tajkarimi  thinks that collectively higher education may be losing billions of dollars on unnecessary hardware, software and maintenance.

“Many large institutions are shackled to seemingly new yet surprisingly outdated client-server based systems that can’t compete with a fully integrated Web-based system like ours,” Tajkarimi said.

“They require expensive hardware and software upgrades with endless high-priced consultant contracts to keep them running.  CAMS Enterprise, however, runs entirely on a couple of servers that typically only cost a few thousand dollars, as compared to competing systems that cost hundreds of thousands or more just for the servers and network hardware.   Given the lingering recession and the President’s clear challenge, unnecessary technology expenditures are no longer in line with today’s realities and expectations,” he said.

Indeed, in some states community colleges are facing funding cuts of more than 20 percent. At the same time, in light of the recession, many students are finding community colleges the affordable alternative to meet the educational requirements of today’s job market. That should mean growing enrollments, but community colleges are caught in a vice grip between higher expectations, increasing enrollments and lower operating budgets.  In the critical area of information technology, dollars and people must work harder than ever and the status quo is not the answer.

A totally integrated academic ERP solution like CAMS Enterprise is built around a single, Microsoft SQL database and relies on shared applications.  Application sharing allows essential functions like registration, course management, portals, financial management and development to work together seamlessly.  

Products designed in this way — as a singular solution rather than an interfaced system — yield a variety of benefits for users:

-- All functions look, feel and operate the same way so users can master them quickly.

-- They eliminate multiple interfaces, increase productivity, reduce the need to acquire additional hardware and expedite implementation.

-- They eliminate updates to multiple systems.

-- They can be easily and efficiently scaled as an institution grows or adds campuses.

About CAMS Enterprise
Developed from the ground up with Microsoft Internet technologies, CAMS Enterprise, is a highly scalable, comprehensive academic management system that is quick to implement and easy to use. CAMS Enterprise consolidates multiple stand-alone systems including admissions, student information, financial aid, student services, fiscal management with HR and payroll, fund-raising, alumni relations, document management, course management a full suite of portals, and more into one solution that ensures administrators, staff, faculty and students all work with the most recent and most accurate information. By uniting administrative and academic management systems, CAMS Enterprise is the only totally Web-based, completely integrated solution for managing the entire student lifecycle.

About Three Rivers Systems Inc.
Three Rivers Systems Inc., the developer and service provider for CAMS, is headquartered in St. Louis and has been delivering innovative technology-driven solutions to the educational community for the past 25 years. The company has a large established client base throughout the U.S., and a rapidly growing international presence with clients in North America, South America, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Asia.

# # #

Three Rivers Systems Inc., the developer and service provider for CAMS has been delivering innovative technology-driven solutions to the educational community for 25 years. The company has a large established client base throughout the world..