CALPIA Completes First Phase of ERP Upgrade Project

The much-lamented “green screen” used to be the only interface state and incarcerated workers had to manage the products and services offered by the California Prison Industry Authority (CALPIA). And while some had come to appreciate the simplicity of the obsolete system, an upgrade was the only way to ensure incarcerated workers got exposure to modern technology so common in workplaces.

CALPIA, which falls under the umbrella of the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, recently completed the first phase of a new ERP system, and officials say it will not only streamline the daily operations but will also build on the technology skills incarcerated workers need to find jobs upon release.

"Utilizing a new Enterprise Resource Planning application is a huge milestone for CALPIA," General Manager Bill Davidson said in a statement. "The new technology and efficiencies will provide users with increased bandwidth to focus on CALPIA's greatest priority to help incarcerated individuals gain job skills for successful re-entry."

CALPIA combines rehabilitation with business operations, offering incarcerated workers the opportunity to learn real-world skills that range from making clothing, license plates and furniture to more specialized fields, such as dental and optical services.

The new Sage X software system is a vast improvement from the legacy application, CALPIA Chief Deputy Director Suzie Changus said, noting that it's much more like the technology a worker might encounter working for a manufacturing company. Folsom State Prison was the first to go live with the new system in December 2023, followed by the other state facilities in April 2025.

“It had been more than a decade — if not 15, 20 years — since we had gone through that level of an application update that touched literally everything,” she said. “Our civil service staff work alongside our incarcerated staff, so they were able to be in the field and be in our institutions and programs and work with them side by side to understand what was needed.”

That journey to a new system began in earnest in 2021, and included a broad range of stakeholders, the largest user group being the incarcerated workers responsible for various aspects of production. Changus said their feedback was essential to the buildout and drew from what they liked about the old system, how it was used for daily operations, and what improvements it needed.

HiPER Solutions served as the project’s risk management consultant, helping to align executive sponsors, vendors and stakeholders. As Changus noted, the diverse collection of stakeholders and criticality of the business system made the need for alignment essential.

“Suzie and Bill did an exceptional job as executive sponsors, building a great team and partnering with their vendor to deliver this project completion at an incredible pace,” HiPER Solutions CEO David Morris said of the project.

The second phase of the implementation will begin in early September and will see a change in approach from the waterfall to scrum methodology to incrementally bake in the features that end users want and need. Those new features will be added and evaluated against the business team’s needs every few weeks.

“Part of this piece is making sure that we have a system out there that people want to use and really does what it's supposed to do,” Changus said. “People fatigue quickly with technical change, so it's that consistently giving them what they need to continue to want to utilize the application.”

Putting the technology in the hands of end users has been a core part of the project thus far and has helped to build comfort levels among those who might have wanted to stay with the old system because it was familiar.

“You can talk about this stuff all day, but in total, they can put their hands on the keyboard, and they can really see how it helps make their lives easier and better; it's just talk,” Changus said.

“Once people started to see it, then they became, essentially, our champions,” she added.