Creating Clarity Through Connected Systems: St. Thomas University

Institutional Profile

St. Thomas University, a dynamic institution focused on delivering a strong student and administrative experience, partnered with SIG to optimize and modernize key processes within its Ellucian environment while reducing the burden of time-intensive manual workflows.

Through a collaborative engagement that included system optimization, process automation, reporting support, and strategic advisory services, SIG helped St. Thomas improve operational efficiency, strengthen data integrity, and enhance overall system usability. The result is a more streamlined and scalable technology environment that better supports institutional goals, empowers staff, and improves the experience for students across campus.

The Challenge

St. Thomas University began its Colleague SaaS journey in Fall 2021. When the current IT leadership team joined in mid-2024, the project was already well underway with an initial Fall 2024 go-live target.

As the new team assessed progress, they identified additional work required to ensure long-term success in the SaaS environment, including further testing, remediation, and cross-department coordination.

• Late-Stage Project Complexity: When the new internal team came on board, they identified additional workstreams that needed attention to support a successful SaaS go-live.
• Customizations & Testing Gaps: Some customizations required additional remediation and testing to align fully with SaaS standards and institutional needs.
• Compressed Timelines: Delivery deadlines had already been pushed, increasing pressure to remediate issues quickly while maintaining system stability.
• Scope and Complexity Underestimated: The migration impacted nearly every department across the university, requiring more coordination, testing, and documentation than initially anticipated.

---

The Turning Point

As the full scope of work became clearer, St. Thomas leadership chose to supplement internal capacity with additional specialized expertise.

SIG was engaged in April 2025 to supplement the team, support SaaS-compliant code remediation, and provide hands-on expertise from prior Colleague SaaS implementations.

---

The Solution

Deep SaaS Remediation Expertise

SIG consultants brought immediate value by addressing areas that posed the greatest risk to a successful go-live:

• Remediated custom code to meet SaaS compliance standards
• Supported integrations and action items required for SaaS readiness
• Accelerated issue resolution with rapid turnaround and clear prioritization

Embedded Partnership Model

Rather than operating as a detached vendor, SIG integrated closely with St. Thomas’ internal team:

• Worked side-by-side with university staff under an aggressive delivery timeline
• Provided a consistent, highly responsive point of contact
• Shared best practices while respecting existing institutional knowledge and design decisions

Coordinated Delivery with Ellucian

SIG collaborated with Ellucian services during critical phases of the migration:

• Participated in joint cadence meetings
• Supported escalation paths when rapid resolution was required
• Helped maintain momentum as the project moved toward go-live

With a new Ellucian project manager in place, the program benefited from stronger governance and clearer coordination across teams and workstreams.

---

Key Outcomes

• Successful Colleague SaaS Go-Live: St. Thomas University successfully went live on Ellucian Colleague SaaS in November 2025 following a reset in scope and remediation.
• SaaS Readiness and Compliance: Customizations and integrations were remediated to align with SaaS standards, supporting a smoother transition into the cloud environment.
• Improved Operational Reliability: The institution transitioned to a vendor-managed cloud environment with enhanced system availability, backup procedures, and security controls.
• Strengthened Delivery Governance: With the new Ellucian project manager in place, the project benefited from clearer structure, task ownership, and escalation paths, enabling more predictable execution and issue resolution.
• Expanded Implementation Capacity: Supplemental expertise helped the team address remediation and readiness activities more efficiently as the project progressed toward go-live.

---

Future Outlook

Following go-live, St. Thomas University continues to partner with SIG to:

• Convert and optimize reporting in the SaaS environment
• Expand staff training and knowledge transfer
• Provide advisory support as additional SaaS capabilities are adopted

The university views SaaS not as a one-time project, but as a long-term transformation requiring continued expertise and collaboration.