With Oracle Cloud, New Zealand university budgets with confidence

New Zealand’s Victoria University of Wellington takes the long view, with a proud tradition of academic excellence dating back to its founding in 1897, the year of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee. Decision makers at VUoW see their work as influencing generations to come. The university serves more than 22,000 students on three campuses across New Zealand’s capital city, with programs in architecture and design, business, education, law, health, humanities and social sciences, and science and engineering.

But VUoW’s legacy financial IT systems lacked integration and were too complex to meet the university’s ambitious goals. Many people accessed the systems just once a year and needed to be retrained each time to deal with the difficult interface. And the university needed to standardize and simplify its business processes, including its complex budgeting process.

When Victoria University of Wellington looked to upgrade from its legacy planning and budgeting system, Cognos TM1, it chose Oracle Cloud Enterprise Performance Management (EPM). The university had already selected Oracle Cloud HCM for its human resources, and has used Oracle E-Business Suite for 20 years. Oracle Cloud EPM met VUoW’s business requirements, would integrate easily with the university’s other Oracle systems, and offered the best value for price.

Victoria University of Wellington primarily uses Oracle Cloud EPM for planning, budgeting, and forecasting. The staff now feels in control of the budgeting process, and even looks forward to it. Staff is delighted by how easy it is to understand the system, which makes the team more productive.

University staff can put together forecasts in less time, and information is more available and visible. Information that was once hidden in individual users’ spreadsheets downloaded from the Cognos software is now shared via the Oracle Cloud application.

Changing the budget and planning application also gave the university an opportunity to reset its business processes. The university has more confidence in its projections, and when the business environment changes, it’s easier to course correct. For example, it was much simpler to adjust 12- to 18-month forecasts when the COVID-19 crisis hit than it would have been using the old systems.

VUoW says Oracle has been a true partner in providing the university with options and service, rather than focusing solely on the short-term sale. Oracle provides integration that breaks down information silos between organizations. Since Oracle’s interfaces are standardized across systems, VUoW no longer needs to maintain specialized skills to manage those interfaces, nor worry about employees with those special skills and knowledge retiring.

Oracle EPM Cloud is VUoW’s first major cloud finance application, and it’s a key component in VUoW’s transition to moving all its business applications to the cloud.

DXC Red Rock offered its experience in Oracle for higher education to Victoria University of Wellington. The partner gave in-person workshops, demos, and other assistance with training, helping VUoW staff who were intimidated by the transition to a new system.