Vanderbilt University modernizes HR and advances talent mobility
Leading university uses Oracle Fusion Cloud HCM and embedded AI to standardize HR processes, reduce screening time, and support internal mobility.
United States | 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. It enrolls more than 13,000 students and offers undergraduate and graduate programs.
Modernizing HR during major change
In 2018, during a period of major change that included Vanderbilt’s separation from its medical center, the university needed an HR system that could better support departments and employees across its 11 schools and colleges.
The previous environment included an Oracle PeopleSoft implementation from the 1990s surrounded by more than 20 custom web applications. With long-standing, legacy processes and fragmented systems, HR work was slow, and it was difficult to deliver consistent access to workforce data and self-service tools.
Standardizing HR, payroll, and talent processes in the cloud
Vanderbilt replaced 30-year-old, fragmented HR systems with Oracle Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management (HCM) and brought HR foundation, payroll, and talent data onto a single platform to help standardize processes and expand self-service.
The university also implemented Oracle Fusion Cloud Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) to support standardized, integrated HR and financial transactions.
Less manual work, better visibility, and faster recruiting steps
Today, teams manage more than 102,000 transactions annually with much less effort. Employees and managers now have one-stop access to payroll, expenses, training, and job opportunities on a single platform, helping departments adapt to new needs.
Using Oracle Cloud HCM as the system of record and underlying platform, Vanderbilt worked with a recruiting services provider to apply AI-based transcript analysis that reduced the length of candidate screenings from 40 minutes to 25 minutes, saving more than 300 work hours in a single month. Vanderbilt 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.”
Building a skills foundation to support internal mobility
To foster growth and internal mobility, Vanderbilt partnered with Mercer to develop a skills-based job architecture. Leveraging Oracle Dynamic Skills, the program defined seven core skills across more than 800 job descriptions to support fair, consistent, and transparent advancement.
This powers Vanderbilt’s talent marketplace, driven by Oracle Grow, where employees can explore career paths, add skills, and access personalized learning. About 86% of staff participate in the program, with numbers growing daily.
The skills foundation also supports AI-driven applications for job matching and recommended salary tools, supporting recruiting and workforce planning.
Supporting expansion with a platform that can scale
Vanderbilt is opening multiple new campuses across the country.
Oracle Cloud HCM is helping the university scale efficiently as it continues to support its mission. The flexibility and rapid innovation of Oracle Cloud HCM are helping the university scale efficiently, embrace new technologies, and support its mission.
“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.”
Partners
Vanderbilt partnered with Mercer, a Marsh business, over the course of a year to build its skills-based job architecture.