Central Washington University Undergoes an Upgrade to Unify, Simplify Internal Systems

In 2011, Central Washington University‘s (CWU) enterprise and finance departments needed to do major updates to their systems.

Jill Hernandez, Director of Enterprise Applications at CWU says the school wanted a more user-friendly interface and a unified system to manage HR and finance information.

“Our customers were having to sign into up to four or five different systems in order to do their daily work here at CWU,” she says. “That was the driving decision behind why we needed to upgrade.”

As a result, the university turned to long-time partner, Oracle, for help and upgraded its systems to PeopleSoft Human Capital Management 9.2 and PeopleSoft Financials 9.2.

Hernandez says CWU’s enterprise and finance staff have seen great improvements in the system since the start of the upgrade, and did not face any major challenges along the way.

“In the 9.2 solution, PeopleSoft did major overhauls in their user interface and the type of functionality and solutions they’re delivering, primarily for self-service and management self-service transactions,” she says. “The people that are logging in to see their employee information and the manager are able to manage their direct reports.”

“Same on the finance side as well,” she says. “During this project, we went live with the travel module with PeopleSoft and purchase requisitions in finance. Both are very self-service, management-based, and we were able to provide customers with simple, easy to use interfaces with the 9.2 solutions.”

Hernandez says both solutions came with detailed manuals to help managers complete their work on the system and manage employees more effectively.

She also says one of the best parts of the upgrade occurred within one of Sierra-Cedar’s labs; Sierra-Cedar was the university’s consulting partner during the upgrade.

“It was actually the first time we did a lab upgrade,” Hernandez says. “It was fantastic. It only took six months. We simultaneously upgraded with finance and HR, since they were both going on at the same time…The lab upgrade was very efficient, cost effective, and helped us move forward quicker.”

Cole Clark, Global Vice President, Education & Research at Oracle says CWU’s upgraded system is benefitting the most from PeopleSoft 9.2’s “fluid user interface.”