Green Mountain Higher Education Consortium Maximizes Efficiency With Optimized Oracle Cloud Environment

Challenge

Reducing Costs With More Efficient Processes

Green Mountain Higher Education Consortium is a consortium of three Vermont colleges: Champlain, Middlebury and St. Michael’s. All three are ranked among the top national liberal arts colleges in the US.

The consortium’s aim is to reduce costs, increase efficiency and improve service levels for the member institutions. These goals are achieved by finding ways to collaborate on administrative services that are common to the three organizations.

To deliver on these objectives, Green Mountain Higher Education Consortium embarked on a digital transformation program, known as Project Ensemble. The initiative involves replacing legacy systems with an integrated Oracle Cloud ERP Financials and HCM (human capital management) solution to support the consortium’s business processes.

Solution

Enabling Shared Services with Oracle Cloud

Green Mountain Higher Education Consortium partnered with Hitachi Vantara to help it optimize its digital transformation, which started with an initial advisory project. As part of this BPRR (Business Process Reimagine and Redesign) initiative, Hitachi Vantara’s dedicated ERP Modernization for Oracle Practice reviewed the consortium’s existing business processes through Digital Advisory and Assessment framework. The team then provided feedback and recommendations to help develop new, more efficient workflows for HR, finance, IT and data governance that were suitable for a shared services environment.

Once the new processes were agreed upon and developed, Hitachi Vantara Oracle consulting experts then went on to help the consortium implement the Oracle Cloud modules, including Finance, Procurement, HCM and Payroll. The project involved rolling out multiple integrations and workflows, self-service, mobile access and reporting. The team also deployed custom security protocols to enable separate access for the different colleges within a single instance of the solution.

Although COVID-19 struck prior to going live, the Hitachi Vantara team continued its collaboration with the consortium, enabling a successful remote launch.

The Oracle Cloud solutions automate various processes, including special pay such as stipends and grants and notifications not possible through standard workflows. They also simplify non-resident alien tax treaty benefits, school year student taxation and special absence management needs as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

With the detailed strategic guidance and implementation services from Hitachi Vantara around Oracle applications, Oracle HCM Cloud is now the main system of record for employee data, thanks to successful integrations with multiple downstream systems and third-party benefit and tax compliance providers.

Outcome

Maximized Efficiency and Lower Costs

With Hitachi Vantara consulting expertise around Oracle applications, The Green Mountain Higher Education Consortium can now deliver shared services for accounts payable, benefits and payroll functions, which prevents duplication of effort and reduces admin costs.

With the integration across the different Oracle applications, thanks to Hitachi Vantara consulting experts, Green Mountain can automate and streamline processes while improving data integrity. With the ability to use mobile devices for time entry, workflow notifications and other self-service actions, employees are more productive. Plus, by digitalizing previously paper-based processes, the consortium has been able to decrease processing times for approvals.

The single integrated platform replaces the institutions’ previous disparate systems, reducing support and system documentation requirements while offering a lower total cost of ownership. The consortium will also be able to take advantage of greater scalability with the Oracle Cloud solutions, as well as ongoing updates and new features as they are launched.