Harper College brings HR and finance together with Oracle Cloud
The college uses both Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP and HCM to break down information silos and improve employee engagement, collaboration, and efficiency.
“Managing finance and HR on a single platform enhances business processes, improves insights and increases efficiency. Moving to the cloud with Oracle will help us deliver the best experience for students, faculty and staff and advance the college’s mission.”
Business challenges
Harper College is one of the largest community colleges in Illinois, named after Dr. William Rainey Harper, a pioneer in the junior college movement and the first president of the University of Chicago. Enrolling about 35,000 students, the college in Chicago’s northwest suburbs was recognized in 2022 for excellence in financial reporting by the Government Finance Officers Association.
However, it turns out that excellence was driven much more by employee effort than by technical capabilities. Harper College still relied on several legacy, on-premises IT systems and many manual processes. The college wanted to increase the efficiency of its core business processes, reduce costs, and make it easier to incorporate new systems and services. It also sought to improve its data quality, enhance IT security, and enable improved reporting capabilities.
The cloud ensures that Harper is always using the latest technology, and that we have access to a stream of continuous innovation. This helps us to improve our business processes and provide our community with a better institutional experience.
Why Harper College chose Oracle
Harper College chose Oracle Fusion Cloud ERP, Oracle Fusion Cloud EPM, and Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM because doing so would enable the college to manage its Finance and HR processes on a single platform.
Results
Using one platform to accurately and efficiently process financial information, track project statuses, and identify patterns in operational and financial data has helped Harper College improve efficiencies and decision-making. The college better serves its students by using a complete and integrated suite of applications to break down information silos; quickly and easily embrace the latest technology; and improve employee engagement, collaboration, and efficiency.
“The cloud enables us to automate and modernize routine functions, freeing us to focus on our students,” says Harper College President Avis Proctor. “That also relates to our value of equity, because we can help more students access an education—and succeed.”
Going forward, the college plans to continue to build and improve the efficiency and intelligence of its operations so it is better positioned for the future.
Partners
Highstreet IT Solutions helped the college with the implementation.