Higher Education Institutions Improve Decision Making with Oracle
By ORACLETuesday, July 27, 2010
Colleges and Universities Gather and Use Actionable Data to Operate More Strategically with Oracle’s Enterprise Performance Management and Business Intelligence Solutions
Redwood Shores, Calif. – July 27, 2010
News Facts
In order to drive informed decision making and operate more strategically, higher education institutions turn to Oracle’s Hyperion performance management applications and business intelligence solutions. With Oracle, institutions create and manage analytics systems that put actionable intelligence directly in the hands of users who can apply it to their daily work.
Oracle Higher Education Customer Details
The California State University (www.calstate.edu/) (CSU), the nation’s largest and most diverse university system serving almost 433,000 students, has begun deploying Oracle solutions to efficiently produce system-wide reporting statistics and analysis. Challenged with decreasing budgets, the university was seeking to standardize its reporting practices as well as look for savings through consolidation and common business practices. By combining Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition (www.oracle.com/us/solutions/ent-performance-bi/enterprise-edition-066546.html) with the university’s previously deployed Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management 9.0 (www.oracle.com/applications/peoplesoft/financial_mgmt/ent/index.html) , CSU will be able to consolidate data onto a single repository, delivering greater visibility into business-critical information. The university successfully deployed the solution on three campuses and will transition the remaining 20 campuses over the next year. Once implementation is complete, university officials will have the resources to improve decision making and build more efficient business processes, helping the university continue to thrive.
The University of Massachusetts (www.massachusetts.edu/index.html) , a multi-campus institution dedicated to quality education and research, has deployed Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition as part of its Summit Program, using a business driven model which brings together IT and business users across campuses. The Oracle solution provides users with access to actionable data via a series of dashboards – helping them to perform their jobs more efficiently and improve decision making. The dashboards will pull data from the university’s Oracle PeopleSoft Enterprise (www.oracle.com/us/products/applications/peoplesoft-enterprise/index.html) human resources, financials and student information systems to support areas ranging from grants management to enrollment management. For example, the university’s first deployed dashboards provide role-based access for research grant data, enabling users such as administrators and principal investigators to track grant spending across the duration of the grant, alerting them if they are tracking significantly over or under budget and enabling them to plan more effectively. The university ultimately plans to add several additional dashboards with role-based user access across a broad range of business areas.
Yeshiva University (www.yu.edu/) , a prominent research university focused on Jewish and secular education, has selected several Oracle financial management and business intelligence tools to improve financial reporting. In as little as six months, the university deployed Oracle Hyperion Financial Management (www.oracle.com/us/solutions/ent-performance-bi/hyperion-financial-management-066534.html) to centralize the finance and accounting divisions and enhance reporting to both the university’s senior external and management teams, moving away from a 43-year-old legacy system that allowed for little useful financial analysis. With the goal of establishing an “all funds budgeting” process which will utilize all the university’s planning components, the university is now working to implement Oracle’s Hyperion Public Sector Planning and Budgeting (www.oracle.com/us/solutions/ent-performance-bi/public-sector-planning-budgetting-065895.html) solution, which will provide configurable budgeting models and a detailed salary planning structure, as well as integrate with Hyperion Financial Management to produce high-quality budget reports.
The University of Minnesota (www1.umn.edu/twincities/index.php) , a prominent research institution with more than 67,000 students, has selected Oracle Business Intelligence Enterprise Edition to standardize and consolidate data across the university’s five campuses. By deploying a standardized business intelligence tool that will integrate with the university’s recently selected PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management and PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Capital Management applications, as well as Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise Campus Solutions Warehouse (www.oracle.com/us/industries/045711.pdf) , the university will be able to deliver real-time information in a secure format to key executives, enhancing the decision-making process. The University of Minnesota has completed a successful pilot program with Oracle Business Intelligence and demonstrated that the university will reduce software costs while significantly reducing burden on the IT team as it moves forward with its full implementation.
Georgia Institute of Technology (www.gatech.edu/) , one of the nation’s top research and technological institutions, has selected Oracle Hyperion Strategic Finance (www.oracle.com/appserver/business-intelligence/hyperion-financial-performance-management/hyperion-strategic-finance.html) to enable better understanding of the financial implications of specific planning scenarios. Historically, the university used multiple Microsoft Excel spreadsheets and internally developed modeling systems to develop long-term financial plans, but found that these tools did not provide the necessary financial visibility. Hyperion Strategic Finance will enable the Institute to develop a student enrollment-driven long-term plan with scenario planning capabilities at the university, campus, college, and account levels. The implementation will enable Georgia Tech to project its long-term operating budget while evaluating scenarios impacted by variables such as capital projects, state appropriations, cost recovery, tuition growth, and inflation. Georgia Tech is working with Edgewater Ranzal on the implementation.
Other higher education institutions that have recently selected, implemented or upgraded Oracle applications or infrastructure software to support improved decision making include: ACT (www.act.org/) , Iowa City, Iowa; Nevada System of Higher Education (system.nevada.edu/) , Las Vegas, Nev.; Northern Illinois University (www.niu.edu/index.shtml) , Dekalb, Ill.; The State University of New York (www.suny.edu/) , Albany, NY; University of California Berkeley (berkeley.edu/) , Berkeley, Calif.; University of Missouri (www.missouri.edu/) , Columbia, Mo.; Washington State University (wsu.edu/) , Pullman, Wash.; Yale University (www.yale.edu/) , New Haven, Conn.
Supporting Quotes
“Considering the tough economic climate for higher education institutions throughout the country, it is critical for universities to gather business-critical information in a concise and efficient manner to ensure they are making optimal financial decisions,” said Jessie Lum, senior director for CMS, chancellor’s office, California State University. “Oracle’s solutions will provide CSU with the relevant and timely information it needs to develop effective short and long-term strategies for the University, helping maintain a vital role with our students, faculty and staff at the campuses and in California’s communities.”
“The Business Intelligence/Summit enterprise reporting program provides users at all levels of the university easy access to financial information in a comprehensive format. We are creating dashboards that summarize our data, giving administrators the ability to see trends and details that help them efficiently manage operations,” said Jacqui Watrous, director of administrative systems for administration and finance, University of Massachusetts.
“After being hampered by an antiquated legacy system, we knew we would need new software to build a detailed salary budgeting and employee profile model to enhance human resources and payroll planning,” said Mike Gower, chief financial officer, Yeshiva University. “Oracle’s Hyperion and Business Intelligence solutions provide comprehensive analytical tools that deliver the insight we need to plan and execute effectively for optimum financial efficiency.”
“Oracle Business Intelligence is the most effective solution in the market for generating actionable data from Oracle’s PeopleSoft applications, while providing an integrated tool set that business officers can use for secure and comprehensive reporting,” said Bernie Gulachek, senior director for strategy management, information technology, University of Minnesota. “This implementation will give us the necessary tools to create accurate financial forecasts and adjust the university’s resources accordingly.”
“In order to plan strategically for the future, we need comprehensive financial forecasting models, “said Jim Kirk, director of budget planning and administration, Georgia Institute of Technology. “Oracle Hyperion Strategic Finance further enhances our capabilities of developing a long-range plan driven by the many workload factors that affect the Institute’s budget, especially the projected research activity and student enrollment mix. The application provides us the ability to test a number of scenarios, as we support our executives in making informed decisions about Georgia Tech’s growth through our current strategic planning process (www.gatech.edu/vision/).”
“Sophisticated higher education institutions understand that it is no longer sufficient to collect data,” said Theo Bosnak, senior director for education and research, Oracle Higher Education. “They must put that data into user’s hands quickly and easily so that they can begin to derive real benefits via more strategic and efficient decision making. Whether tracking research grants, monitoring budgets or keeping an eye on enrollments, Oracle’s Hyperion and Business Intelligence tools provide the stable foundation for reliable, flexible data and analytics systems.”
Supporting Resources
Oracle in Higher Education (www.oracle.com/industries/education/highered.html)
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Katie Barron Janice Hazen
Oracle O’Keeffe & Company
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katie.barron@oracle.com (mailto:katie.barron@oracle.com) jhazen@okco.com (mailto:jhazen@okco.com)
