Henry County Schools had acquired a peculiar distinction: according to Highstreet’s account, it was the last school district still using its aging, on-premises business system. There are nicer ways to be unique. A system approaching the end of its life is awkward enough; being its final school-district customer makes the predicament rather more intimate.
The district needed to manage finance and planning while preparing for growth. Its 2023 project announcement described 50 schools, roughly 43,000 students, and 6,000 employees and contractors. An accounting system in that setting is part of the daily machinery of education. A delayed report or a payroll problem does not politely remain inside the IT department.
- The job: Highstreet advises on, implements, integrates and supports Oracle enterprise systems.
- The focus: city halls, school districts and universities, where reporting rules and payroll calendars matter.
- The useful twist: the offer extends through staff readiness and the updates that arrive after launch.
Highstreet IT Solutions operates in this unphotogenic but consequential territory. Oracle supplies the applications. Highstreet helps organizations decide how to use them, move their records, connect surrounding systems, prepare employees, and keep the result working. Its current pitch concentrates on SLED: state and local government and education. The acronym has all the romance of a procurement form, which makes it an excellent description of the market.
The last district on the old system
At Henry County, the first thing wearing out was the existing software’s useful life. The case for replacement also involved financial processes and strategic planning. Highstreet’s September 2023 announcement said the district evaluated several vendors and valued its school-district Oracle experience and customer service. The decision concerned a working finance office, rather than a cloud platform in the abstract.
Highstreet’s April 2024 account reported that Oracle ERP and EPM had gone live in March. ERP handles enterprise resources such as finance; EPM covers planning and performance management. The account described streamlined reporting, budgeting and forecasting, along with work on Georgia’s DE046, DE106 and CPI reports. These are the details that make a specialist useful: the state still expects the right report when the new screens arrive.
The rollout also illustrates why project dates deserve careful reading. The earlier announcement forecast ERP in January 2024 and HCM in July. The later account reported the March finance launch and anticipated HR and payroll in September. A forecast and a completed milestone are different kinds of evidence. Buyers should keep both in view when assessing a project story.
Henry County also selected Highstreet’s Extended Cloud Support. That choice carries the story beyond replacing old software. Someone must maintain the configuration, help users, and absorb the changes to come. A launch photograph captures none of that work, however handsome the commemorative cake.
The city that bought the day after
Grand Rapids offers a second, more revealing buying decision. In May 2023, Highstreet announced that the city had chosen it for a full Oracle Cloud suite spanning financials, budgeting, HR and payroll. The stated problems included duplicate manual processes, disconnected systems, and reliance on paper and spreadsheets. The desired change concerned how the work happened.
The announcement said the city chose Highstreet for its cloud methodology, attention to user readiness, and flexibility around implementation timing. It also specified a guaranteed five-year cost structure and 48 months of post-go-live support, including application-update services. Those terms describe the shape of the commitment. They should not be mistaken for a published dollar price.
Post-go-live support selected by Grand Rapids in its 2023 project announcement.
That is a useful clue to Highstreet’s business model. The firm sells advisory and implementation work, followed by recurring managed services. For a customer, the point is continuity. For Highstreet, it creates a relationship that can continue after the project team has finished building. The quality of that relationship depends on the scope of the contract and the work actually delivered.
Oracle’s quarterly updates make the arrangement practical. A cloud application continues to change after installation. Highstreet’s support offering includes assessing releases, testing them against a customer’s configuration, considering new features, and helping staff adjust. The operational question is therefore recurring: will the next version work with the way this organization pays people, approves purchases and reports its finances?
The machinery behind the manners
Consulting firms are generous with promises of partnership. Highstreet’s more concrete distinction lies in the tools surrounding its services. Cartographer extracts, cleanses, transforms and loads legacy data. Bridges connects enterprise applications with other systems and providers, including banks, payroll and benefits services. These tackle separate problems: getting records into the new system, then keeping information moving around it.
Bridges supports scheduled and real-time exchanges. Highstreet says it prices the platform by integration points rather than traffic or CPU usage. That is a specific budgeting proposition, especially for an organization trying to forecast operating costs. A buyer still needs to establish what counts as a point, which interfaces are included, and how additions will be charged.
Another offering, Data-RefleXtion, preserves searchable and reportable historical information while legacy systems are retired. The appeal is straightforward. Moving current operations does not erase the need to answer questions about earlier years. Old records can have a remarkably active retirement.
Highstreet also markets FastraX, an implementation accelerator, and DeliveryX, its delivery framework. Its public-sector configuration approach includes fund accounting, grant compliance and audit structures. These are company-described capabilities, rather than a universal promise about project speed. Their value depends on how closely the prepared configuration fits the buyer’s requirements.
A specialist with a longer guest list
The public-sector emphasis sits on a longer Oracle history. In 2016, the University of Kansas selected Highstreet to replace PeopleSoft 9.0 Financials with Oracle ERP Cloud. The announcement described an existing relationship and earlier work helping resolve issues following a PeopleSoft HCM upgrade. Familiarity with the institution was part of the proposition.
Its experience also extends into commercial finance. Highstreet describes Oracle E-Business Suite work for Reliance Standard Life and Axis Capital, including financial accounting hubs, reporting and complex allocations. These examples place it in enterprise applications consulting: the market for making finance and workforce software function within a particular organization.
Henry Tran, its president and co-founder, has spent almost three decades designing and delivering Oracle applications, according to his biography. CEO Nick Magliato leads the company. CIVC Partners acquired Highstreet in February 2024 in partnership with management; the announcement said the management team would stay in place.
In March 2026, Highstreet acquired Sacramento-based Graviton Consulting Services, adding public-sector Oracle Cloud and PeopleSoft expertise. The announcement emphasized continuity of customer teams and leadership. It is a coherent expansion for a firm whose offer depends on knowing the customer’s operating environment, as well as the software.
“Tech doesn’t stand still and neither do we.”Nick Magliato, Highstreet’s 2021 brand announcement
The workforce is distributed across countries and time zones. A culture post describes virtual social events featuring baby-photo guessing, bingo and a colleague’s view of the Las Vegas Sphere. Enterprise systems may be solemn; the people supporting them are allowed an evening off.
Before you sign for day one
The approach suggests several questions readers can copy into their own buying process. Ask for a demonstration using a real workflow and representative data. Name the reports, payroll rules and approvals that must survive the move. Establish who owns every interface. Put release testing and staff support into the operating plan before cutover.
Highstreet’s delivery material describes readiness work during the 90 days before launch and planning for the first 90 days afterward. Its TestDrive offering extends hands-on guidance through stabilization. The useful principle is to test whether people can perform their work, alongside testing whether the application runs.
This is a good fit for buyers committed to Oracle who need application expertise and sustained operational help. A small business seeking a simple accounting package has a different problem. So does an organization unwilling to assign staff to decisions, clean up data or change its processes. An implementation partner can supply considerable help; the customer still owns its policies and priorities.
Highstreet’s story leaves a practical question on the table: after the new system goes live, who understands it well enough to help the finance office through an ordinary Tuesday? Grand Rapids’ four-year support choice gives that question the weight it deserves.