HR professionals in higher education institutions face unique challenges. They manage a workforce that's constantly changing in size and demographics, employees that can be geographically dispersed around the country or the world, and thousands of student workers who often have special pay and benefits requirements.

Add to that mix former professors and administrators collecting retirement benefits, and empowering employees to do as much as they can on their own is increasingly a necessity. Web-based solutions that enable employee self-service are key to efficient HR operations. The University of Louisville and the University of Michigan are using PeopleSoft Inc.'s Human Resource Management System (HRMS) and Enterprise Campus Solutions 8.1 to improve efficiency and save money.

Pleasanton, Calif.-based PeopleSoft has more than 730 higher education customers. In December, it announced its acceptance of Oracle Corp.'s takeover bid. Oracle executives have said they plan to maintain and upgrade PeopleSoft's products.

PeopleSoft provides online, self-service tools that enable HR professionals, students, faculty and alumni to access and update academic and administrative data such as enrollment, financial aid, grades and personal contact information. School services, including admission status, registration, loan application, class scheduling grading and transcripts, are accessible via the Internet. HRMS version 8.1 is the core component, and Enterprise Campus Solutions software adds functionality to the HR system.

"We've allowed employees to change their home address, put in emergency contacts and change their phone numbers" via the web, says Sue MacDavitt, senior director for HR records and information at the University of Michigan (U-M) at Ann Arbor. Future enhancements will allow employees to change their campus address and view their current and past job appointment information. "It's a more direct role for employees in processes that are [currently] paper-based," she says.

Julien Carter, associate vice president of HR at the University of Louisville in Louisville, Ky., says PeopleSoft's technology allows his staff to manage the needs of 5,400 faculty members and staff efficiently. Student employees bring Louisville's workforce to 11,000, and there are about 8,400 people with dependents collecting benefits from the university.

"The only way a small staff of 44 can [handle that workforce] efficiently is by learning the technology in PeopleSoft" and outsourcing some processes, Carter says. "Otherwise, it would be a real mess. Today's workforce has higher expectations from its HR staff, and it would be very challenging if we didn't have technology to help address their needs. It gives to us the potential to do some business process redesign and provide more access to the user than ever before."

Moving to the Web

Louisville used a mainframe-based batch processing system before switching to PeopleSoft in 1999 because the old system wasn't Y2K compliant, says Donna Bartman, HR project manager at Louisville and special assistant for information technology (IT) to the vice president of business affairs. Louisville first shifted its basic payroll, benefits and position management functions to the new software, added applicant tracking after the first year and started using the web-based version in 2002. Lightweight Directory Access Protocol security enables HR staffers, students and faculty to use a single password to access all of the systems.

Another PeopleSoft strength is reporting, Carter and Bartman say. With the old system, HR might have had to ask the university's IT staff for help to get at data. Now, the HR staff can create custom reports used for workforce planning, reconciling financial data, and creating management and productivity reports for HR units. "Now we can develop and adjust our reports as the situation requires," Carter says.

Timeliness has improved, too. "The transactions update in real time, and we can do things like produce special checks off-cycle," Carter adds.

Carter notes that using PeopleSoft products has made it easier to outsource some HR functions, freeing staff to do other work. Louisville outsources its Form W-2 production and employee verification tasks.

Why does using PeopleSoft products make outsourcing simpler? If an outsourcing vendor has to create unique interfaces to work with an employer's unique software, the cost of outsourcing rises. But when many employers use the same software, outsourcing vendors can develop companion software more easily and spread the cost of that development among multiple employers.

Also, when universities or other employers have similar IT environments, they can share programming to make use of the outsourced service. For example, Carter says, Louisville outsourced its W-2 processes after Bartman coordinated with Ohio State University, which used a similar version of PeopleSoft and which had used the same vendor for W-2 services. Ohio State shared programming with Louisville that made the implementation of its new W-2 service go more smoothly. That cooperation would have been difficult if each institution were still using its own customized system, Carter says.