Oracle announced that the University of Puget Sound, a national undergraduate liberal arts college in Tacoma, Washington with 2,600 students, has selected Oracle’s PeopleSoft applications and Oracle Hyperion Public Sector Budgeting and Planning running on Oracle Database to overhaul its legacy student, financial and human resources systems. The new systems will help facilitate more efficient inter-campus information sharing and enhance analytics capabilities for administrators.

Puget Sound’s legacy student administration system was developed in-house and was nearing end-of-life. Its maintenance costs were escalating and it lacked meaningful reporting, forecasting and analytics capabilities. The institution needed new student, financial and human resources solutions to meet dynamic constituent and student needs, facilitate complete data transfers between departments and ensure efficient and cost effective maintenance.

After an exhaustive RFP process, Puget Sound selected Oracle’s PeopleSoft Financials, PeopleSoft Human Resources, PeopleSoft Student Administration and Oracle Hyperion Public Sector Budgeting and Planning, all running on Oracle Database. The institution selected Oracle’s PeopleSoft applications due to their flexibility, ability to exchange data with external systems, reporting and budgeting tools and Oracle’s longstanding support for the higher education community.

By selecting Oracle applications, Puget Sound is looking to standardize business processes and adopt best practices. Specifically, the institution will leverage more robust reporting and analytics capabilities to assist in strategic planning and decision-making and compete more effectively with peer institutions in delivering new features that students and staff expect, such as sharing information via mobile applications.

Puget Sound recently began the implementation and will complete its project, known as “Optimize Puget Sound,” in December 2013. Once complete, the new system will provide access to approximately 3,700 users, including students, faculty and staff. The institution is working with Oracle Gold Partner MIS, Inc. on the implementation.