Success Story

Statewide implementation of Excent’s IEP solution creates strong compliance and easy monitoring in South Carolina

The Situation
Throughout the state of South Carolina, IEP case management was being handled differently from one district to the next. This created more overhead in state monitoring and administration, less control over compliance requirements, and inconsistencies in the way special education was being administered from one district to another. After an initial attempt to implement a statewide solution in 1999 with a different vendor, the South Carolina State Department of Education went searching for other options in 2004.
The Excent IEP Solution
Excent® won the statewide IEP contract in 2005, and began a massive statewide implementation project. Because Excent’s IEP solution was already a proven product in South Carolina, many new districts began implementing this web-based solution immediately. The Excent team began by pulling together a group of special education professionals from across the state. This User Group spent the next several months working closely with a core implementation team from Excent to redesign the IEP form document, streamline data flow, create business rules, re-work the statewide reporting elements, and formulate training and implementation plans. This group met several times in person or virtually to continue to refine these new processes until consensus was reached.

Business Results
With the buy-in from several different districts as well as the state department,Excent was able to develop a comprehensive solution that is not only compliant, but easy-to-use, yet truly a comprehensive system that meets the needs of all level of users. Rather than the sense of dread and frustration that often accompanies these types of large-scale changes, state department administration, district directors, teachers, psychologists, and administrative personnel all share a sense of pride of ownership and enthusiasm for the Excent IEP implementation project. As of August 2007, 100% of the districts in South Carolina are using Excent’s IEP solution.