Higher Education leaders gather in Edinburgh

Higher Education (HE) institutions throughout the UK are embracing collaboration and adopting sophisticated AI software to help them save money and become more operationally efficient.

A cohort of senior leaders from some of the UK’s most recognized universities came together in Edinburgh last week to discuss opportunities cloud-based software can bring to help navigate some of the toughest funding and fiscal challenges faced in decades.

Hosted by Aberdeen-based Inoapps—the global Oracle partner that delivers innovative cloud-based solutions—senior CIOs and other leading lights in the HE sector, alongside other public sector leaders, heard how technology can liberate support services to help staff become ‘better, quicker, slicker.’

Speaking under Chatham House Rules, technology experts admitted that universities are facing huge financial pressures and have to embrace digital transformation as the world around them changes.

Shared services like Human Resources, finance, and procurement are increasingly finding cloud-based Oracle ERP software can eradicate duplication, standardize everyday processes and liberate staff to focus on more creative and interesting tasks.

“Tech can help drive through change and empower leaders across Higher Education and the wider public sector to get huge efficiencies from their systems,” one leader said. “There’s a great desire to see collaboration, move to the cloud and implement more efficient systems at a time of dire financial straits.”

Those attending heard that if universities don’t move now to tackle efficiency challenges, the ‘tech deficit’ would only grow and still have to be tackled further down the line.

Most institutions now want a shift to self-service for many everyday operations that were previously handled by a centralized team, something younger people—both staff and students—have grown up with.

The group heard how banks have led the way in self-service models with a major shift to banking online and app-based approaches, making it easy to access information at any time: “Universities need to get there and get there quickly.”

But staff affected by new systems need to be shown ‘what’s in it for me’ early in the change process and how it can benefit them in the long term. And then it needs to be rigorously enforced without allowing individuals to demand change to systems to suit their own needs.

“It’s buy out of the box, not build our own,” one CIO said. “You wouldn’t build your own home computer, so why would we build our own ERP system?”

Businesses and organizations across public and private sectors share many of the same issues, challenges and problems and that’s why Oracle Cloud software is so successful across myriad sectors and nations: it provides efficiency solutions for all.

Universities experience many of the same challenges and solutions, and the meeting heard how there is significant appetite for sharing experience, knowledge and how to employ the software across institutions.