About Banner 6
Banner is an administrative software application developed specifically for higher education institutions by Systems and Computer Technology Corporation (SCT). Banner maintains student, financial aid, and human resources data.
It consists of five integrated systems:
Banner Systems:
  • Finance (Accounts Receivable)
  • Student
  • Financial Aid
  • Human Resources
  • Accounts Receivable
A Description of Banner
The system is highly integrated because they all share a common database. This common database is shared by everyone who uses Banner, which makes it easy to maintain records on someone who applies to the College, becomes a student, graduates, and then becomes an alumnus. Technically, data is not actually stored in Banner. Data is stored in a powerful database called Oracle. It would be difficult for a non-technical user to directly add or retrieve data from the actual database. The Banner software acts as an interface to the Oracle database, making the job of adding or retrieving data much easier. Banner provides the features and processing capabilities needed for student information (admissions, registration, etc.), personnel information (employee benefits, salary/deduction history, etc.), and financial aid information (needs analysis, packaging, etc.). Banner is made up of systems which in turn are made up modules, each of which handle a major function. For example, the Human resource modules cover functions such as Payroll, Benefits, Applicant Tracking, and Position Control. The Student system modules include Admissions, Scheduling, Registration, and Academic History. Because of the common database, a single department does not use the information entered into Banner. Other departments share data, sometimes several years in the future. For example, a name change would be reflected in the Student, Financial Aid, and Human Resource. Though information on Banner is shared, many users are allowed only to look up (query) specific information. When you perform a query, you retrieve information from the database and display that information on the screen. Banner has a variety of tools that let you search by name and automatically retrieve associated information. Banner also has sophisticated security measures to make sure that only authorized individuals have access to specific data. -M