Vanderbilt University modernizes HR and advances talent mobility with Oracle Cloud HCM
Moving on-premises HR to Oracle Cloud HCM and tapping embedded AI capabilities allows the university to expand opportunities for its growing workforce.
United States | Higher Education
“For Vanderbilt, Oracle is not an end point. It is a foundation that grows with us. It has enabled us to increase the speed, adoption, and impact of our strategy to elevate employee access, opportunity, and experience. Our university motto is ‘Dare to Grow,’ and technology has helped us turn that promise into progress.”
Founded in 1873, Vanderbilt University is a private research university in Nashville, Tennessee, that is a globally renowned hub for learning, innovation, and leadership. During a period of major change, the university replaced 30-year-old, fragmented HR systems with Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM, becoming an early adopter of cloud technology in higher education. Uniting HR, payroll, and talent data on a single unified platform has allowed the university to standardize processes and deliver self-service tools, allowing teams to now manage more than 100,000 annual transactions with ease. Embedded AI has cut candidate screening times in half, saving more than 300 work hours in a single month. A unified skills infrastructure helped Vanderbilt jump-start its skills strategy and launch its Oracle-powered Talent Marketplace, where nearly half of Vanderbilt’s employees are closing skills gaps and expanding career growth possibilities. As the university expands nationwide, Oracle Cloud HCM is helping Vanderbilt grow efficiently and deliver on its mission.
Why Vanderbilty University chose Oracle
In 2018, during a period of major change that included the university’s separation from its medical center, Vanderbilt needed a new, centralized HR system that could keep pace with change and give departments and employees more autonomy to support their diverse missions across its 11 schools and colleges. The university’s previous environment included a PeopleSoft implementation from the 1990s, augmented by more than 20 custom web applications, making processes slow and fragmented. Oracle Cloud HCM was chosen for its unified platform, single source of truth, centralized processes, and ability to adapt, grow, and drive ongoing innovation, supporting the university’s mission of building a 21st-century learning and research institution.
Results
The implementation of Oracle Cloud HCM and Oracle Cloud ERP replaced outdated systems and standardized HR and financial transactions. Today, teams efficiently manage more than 102,000 transactions annually with much less effort.
Employees and managers now have a seamless experience, with one-stop access to payroll, expenses, training, job opportunities, and more on a single intuitive platform. The unified platform supports modern business processes and helps departments quickly adapt to new needs.
Using Oracle Cloud HCM as the system of record and underlying platform, Vanderbilt worked with a recruiting services partner to apply AI-based transcript analysis. Together, the solutions have reduced the length of candidate screenings from 45 minutes to 25 minutes, saving more than 300 work hours in a single month. Vanderbilt also leverages Oracle AI across broader recruiting and HR processes to reduce human error and automate routine workflows for greater efficiency.
“We really appreciate the way Oracle embeds AI into our existing licensing rather than as an add-on for every little thing. It's a huge difference,” says Ben Frazee, Vanderbilt’s executive director of enterprise applications.
To foster growth and internal mobility, Vanderbilt partnered with Mercer in 2024 to develop a robust skills-based job architecture. Leveraging Oracle Dynamic Skills, they defined seven core skills across more than 800 job descriptions as the backbone for fair, consistent, and transparent advancement. With this framework as the foundation, Vanderbilt used Oracle Grow to build its Talent Marketplace, where employees can explore career paths, add skills, and access personalized learning. Already about 48% of staff participate, with numbers growing daily. The skills infrastructure has also powered AI-driven applications that support automated job matching and recommended salary tools, making recruiting and workforce planning more efficient.
With the university now in a phase of rapid expansion, opening multiple new campuses across the country, the flexibility and rapid innovation of Oracle Cloud HCM are enabling Vanderbilt to scale efficiently, embrace new technologies, and deliver on its mission through radical collaboration and a shared commitment to progress.
“We’re at a pivotal time in Vanderbilt's history where we've got significant expansion going on. We are well positioned to do that, in large part because of the systems we've got in place to support it,” Frazee says.
Partners
Vanderbilt partnered with Mercer in 2024 to build its skills-based job architecture, leveraging Oracle Dynamic Skills.
About the company
Founded in 1873, Vanderbilt University is a private research university located in Nashville, Tennessee. It enrolls more than 13,000 students and offers a wide range of undergraduate and graduate programs.