Higher Education Institutions Expand Services and Transform Their Campuses With Oracle(R) Applications and Technology
3 May 2006
Oracle (Nasdaq: ORCL) today announced that more than 35 leading U.S. and international-based colleges and universities recently purchased or implemented Oracle(R) applications and technology to help achieve institutional goals and support learning. These institutions are enhancing services for students, faculty, staff, alumni and other key constituents, as well as controlling costs through greater administrative efficiencies and timely access to reliable information and services.
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"Oracle is committed to supporting higher education institutions' efforts to transform learning through information technology. Our continued momentum in the higher education community is testament to the critical role that Oracle plays in helping colleges and universities achieve this goal," said Oracle Higher Education Vice President Jim McGlothlin. "Oracle's technology architecture and applications come together to support the needs of higher education through increased immediacy, flexibility and operational efficiency, including the ability to accommodate complex environments."
City University Increases Access to Critical Information
City University in Bellevue, Wash. -- which serves more than 10,000 students at several North American and European sites each year -- recently replaced disparate information technology (IT) systems with an integrated Oracle infrastructure built to enable rapid access to accurate student, human resources and financial data. The new system -- implemented without customization and deployed in six months -- also helped eliminate duplication of IT resources to reduce total cost of ownership. Using Oracle's PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management and Oracle's PeopleSoft Human Capital Management applications, City University reduced the time needed to generate human resources and financial reports from several weeks to minutes, driving more informed decisions in real-time. The university is also using Oracle's PeopleSoft Campus Solutions to efficiently manage the entire student administration function, including enrollment, student records and finance.
"Our PeopleSoft investment enabled our administration to begin collecting outstanding receivables from students -- totaling almost one million dollars per quarter -- more quickly through an online credit card processing tool," said James R. Ladd, Executive Vice President, Finance & Operations, City University. "In addition to drastically accelerating our collection of receivables, we have eliminated the duplication of IT resources, saving the university tens of thousands of dollars in operating costs."
The University of Wisconsin-Madison Delivers Self-Service and Improves IT Performance
The University of Wisconsin-Madison recently upgraded its PeopleSoft Campus Solutions to improve information access and usability for more than 1,600 staff and 40,000 students who use the university's Integrated Student Information System (ISIS). ISIS provides the underlying data processing structure for several critical student-facing offices, including admissions, student records and enrollment, financial services and the bursar's office.
"Along with our need to stay current with new technology, a key goal for this upgrade was to increase student, adviser and faculty self-service by providing access to critical data online via improved integration with our customized campus portal," said Ilene Seltzer, University of Wisconsin- Madison's Oracle Campus Solutions Manager. "The Oracle applications deliver a new level of convenience and self-service to our student base -- allowing our administration and faculty to focus on providing a top-notch education to our students."
Michigan Technological University Enhances Recruiting through Prospective Student Portal
Michigan Technological University (Michigan Tech) implemented Oracle Portal, a component of Oracle Fusion Middleware, to create a centralized access point for prospective students that has helped the university improve its recruiting efforts. Prospective students use the portal to access school content, including applications, as well as information on key registration and financial deadlines, compliance, billing and roommate selection. Michigan Tech also uses Oracle Portal to create a sense of community for incoming students, deploy reporting tools for recruiters and review recruiting progress via an executive level dashboard.
"Our portal for prospective students has enabled us to tailor our recruiting efforts to each individual person. We have received considerable positive feedback from students who have used it," said Mary Jane Lowney, Director, Administrative Information Services, Michigan Technological University. "In addition, the Oracle Portal single interface allows our recruiting staff to securely access different sources of information and develop comprehensive reports that help in planning and decision-making."
The University of Missouri Upgrades to Improve Intra-Campus Collaboration
The University of Missouri is comprised of four campuses -- Columbia, Kansas City, Rolla and St. Louis. Recently, the university embarked on a cross-campus initiative to upgrade its human resources and financial management systems, as well as integrate PeopleSoft Student Campus Solutions 8.9 for academic advisement, campus community, campus self service, recruiting/admissions, financial aid, student financials and student records. The project will let the university take advantage of improved navigation capabilities and facilitate the centralization of business operations to optimize integration abilities among the four campuses.
"Our goal is to have all of our business operations supported by the same version of PeopleSoft," said George Rickerson, associate vice president of Administrative Information Technology Services for the University. "We want to allow our campuses to realize new opportunities through integration and to provide the best services possible to our students, faculty and staff."
As the pilot campus for the full implementation of PeopleSoft Student Campus Solutions 8.9, Missouri-Rolla went live on the full student administration module in January, facilitating enrollment, admissions and student records management through self-service functionality. Students are using the new applications regularly; in fact, so many are using the self- service functionality that the school believes it will be able to phase out telephone registration. After Missouri-Rolla's successful upgrade, the university is confident about plans for a phased rollout at the other campuses. The St. Louis and Kansas City campuses are already successfully using Version 8.9 for the recruitment and admissions portions of Student Campus Solutions. They too are pleased with the latest version's improved navigation and other enhancements.
The University of Missouri also uses PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management 8.8 and PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Capital Management 8.0 to manage its back office. To take advantage of improved navigation functionality and further automate human resource management processes, the campus recently began an upgrade to PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Capital Management 8.9. In December, the University of Missouri became one of only three institutions of higher education accepted into Oracle's Insight program. This program will support the university's efforts to transition its computer systems to the PeopleSoft software.
"This program will be a key tool in our effort to make sure that the University of Missouri is getting full value from its investment in the PeopleSoft software in human resources and finance," said Rickerson. "Except for the time commitment for our staff, there is no cost to the University of Missouri for the program."
Under this plan, consultants from Oracle will work with University of Missouri functional leads and technology teams to discover how they are using PeopleSoft modules in the human resources and financial management departments. The university is also closely following the development of Oracle Fusion applications, Rickerson said.
"Leveraging open standards and investing in service-oriented architecture are excellent directions for Oracle," he said. "The goals for Oracle Project Fusion make a lot of sense. The combination of PeopleSoft and Oracle has strengthened both organizations, and we are happy to be a partner with a company like Oracle that has the resources and expertise to follow through on what it says it will do."
Higher Education Community Grows with Oracle
Other U.S.-based higher education institutions that have recently selected or implemented Oracle E-Business Suite and PeopleSoft Enterprise applications include: Arizona State University, Tempe, Ariz.; University of California, Berkeley; University of Colorado, Boulder, Colo.; Kentucky Community and Technical College System, Versailles, Ky.; and University of Texas at Arlington.
Additional colleges and universities deploying Oracle technology -- such as Oracle Database and Oracle Fusion Middleware -- include Coast Community College District, Costa Mesa, Calif.; Embry Riddle Aeronautical University, Daytona Beach, Fla.; Harding University, Searcy, Ark.; Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, Ill.; Oregon State University, Corvallis, Ore.; Rancho Santiago Community College, Santa Ana, Calif.; University of Oklahoma, Norman, Okla.; University of Rochester, Rochester, N.Y.; and University of Utah, Salt Lake City, Utah.
Recent implementations outside the United States include University of Cambridge, United Kingdom; ROC Nijmegen, Netherlands; ROC van Twente, Netherlands; Singapore Management University; University of Derby, United Kingdom; and University of Manchester, United Kingdom.
Last month, approximately 4,500 Oracle customers attended the Higher Education User Group/Alliance 2006 conference in Nashville, Tenn. to network with Oracle executives and peers, as well as attend sessions on Oracle's solutions for the higher education industry. In addition, 140 users and 20 Oracle strategists attended the Product Advisory Group (PAG) Summit, held in conjunction with the user group meeting.
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Source: prnewswire
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