Long Island University Implements Oracle® Applications to Deliver an Enhanced, More Efficient Student Experience

Large Multi-Campus University Benefits from Oracle’s Integrated Solutions for Student Administration, Financial Management, and Human Resources Management.

Redwood Shores.-Oracle today announced that Long Island University has partnered with Oracle Consulting to implement Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise Campus Solutions to improve service to its more than 27,000 students by consolidating student information and delivering self-service functionality. The implementation was the most recent step in a University-wide technology solution transformation, which included successful PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Capital Management and PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management implementations in 2006. All of Long Island University’s Oracle applications run on Oracle(r) Database 10g and Oracle Real Application Clusters.

By integrating PeopleSoft Enterprise Campus Solutions with PeopleSoft applications for human capital management and financial management, the University benefits from more streamlined business processes that help reduce costs. Long Island University worked with Oracle Consulting during the implementations, replacing the University’s aging legacy enterprise resource planning (ERP) system, which was highly customized and costly to maintain. Working together throughout the implementation, Long Island University and Oracle Consulting were able to meet all the institutions processing milestones and budget goals.

“We are in the business of serving students, so advancing our student information system was vital to the University’s success. For that reason, we chose Oracle - including best-of-class PeopleSoft applications and Oracle Database,” said George Baroudi, chief information officer, Long Island University. “With Oracle, we have gained flexible, advanced applications and technology, as well as a reliable vendor partner committed to our success.”

“Long Island University has a strong, clear path for the future of its technology, and we are proud to help the University achieve its goals,” said Steve Koporec, regional vice president, Oracle. “Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise applications, technology and strategic direction help the University provide enhanced student services while improving operational efficiency.”

Delivering Accurate, Accessible Information to Students
With Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise Campus Solutions applications for Student Administration, Recruiting and Admissions, Student Financials, Financial Aid and Student Records, the University has realized efficiencies in data management throughout its student system by implementing a single instance of the application to support all seven Long Island University locations. This in turn provides the University with a single, holistic view of each student’s records and enrollments while securing transactions and administrative views of those records by each campus as necessary. By integrating student systems with financial and human capital management administrative systems, the University enjoys enhanced visibility into critical data, helping it to accelerate decision cycles.

One of the highest priorities for the implementation was to provide students with self-service functionality. Students can now log-in online to enroll, schedule courses and pay bills. In addition, prospective students can use the online admissions process�built on PeopleSoft Enterprise Online Marketing�to submit and track applications easily.

Streamlining Student Financials for Greater Efficiency
Long Island University integrated Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise Student Financials and Student Financial Aid with the University’s PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management applications to facilitate tuition calculation, payment posting, refund processing and billing for more than $26 million in student receivables.

It has benefited from increased efficiency by automating student financials processes. For example, before the implementation, the University had to build student financial aid packages for each individual student. Now it can automatically create suggested financial aid packages based on specific criteria - significantly decreasing the time to deliver financial aid offers.

Improving Business Processes with Advanced Functionality
Since implementing Oracle’s PeopleSoft Enterprise Financial Management and PeopleSoft Enterprise Human Capital Management, Long Island University has transformed its administrative systems, taking advantage of the applications’ flexibility and robust functionality to increase efficiency. The financial system helps the University review and streamline business processes, such as purchasing, leading to reduced costs. In addition, employees can use PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal to access accurate financial information and generate timely financial reports and analysis.

Long Island University has a complex human resources system with multiple bargaining units and multi-dimensional benefits packages. With PeopleSoft, the University integrates all these detailed requirements into one system. It has simplified payroll significantly, and is evaluating ways to further streamline payroll for different employee types. In addition, employees can access human resources information online, easily making changes to benefits or personal information.

Ensuring Maximum System Reliability
The University also implemented Oracle technology including Oracle Database 10g and Oracle Real Application Clusters to provide the robust, flexible IT infrastructure the large, multi-campus institution required to support its critical applications. With its Oracle technology infrastructure, Long Island University can improve disaster recovery and benefit from Oracle’s clustering and load balancing capabilities�allowing it to automatically distribute database-processing loads among multiple servers to improve availability and performance. During the initial technology implementation, a specialized team from Oracle Consulting completed a three-week on-site visit to equip the University’s database administrators with the tools and knowledge needed to maximize its technology investment.

“Throughout each phase of our Oracle implementations, Oracle Consulting has delivered personalized, expert support. We believe that working with a vendor consulting group has many advantages, including access to consultants who work hard to resolve every issue�no matter how small�and to ensure the implementation and on-going maintenance and support are completed as cost-effectively as possible,” Baroudi said.

In the near future, Long Island University plans to leverage additional advanced functionality in the PeopleSoft Enterprise Customer Relationship Management application to enhance recruiting efforts. It also plans to implement PeopleSoft Enterprise Performance Management to garner more sophisticated analytics and business intelligence from the PeopleSoft applications.