Mastering the Cloud at Staffordshire University

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About Staffordshire University

Staffordshire University promotes itself as the Connected University: connected to the needs of their students, to business and to society.

The urban campus in Stoke-on-Trent is the University’s main location and the hub for a global network of over 20,000 people studying for a Staffordshire University award. In 2019, the University opened the Digital Institute London, harnessing the power of next generation technology.

  • Industry: Higher Education
  • Employees: 1,200
  • Locations: Stoke-on-Trent, Stafford, Shrewsbury & London, with a UK & global network of partner institutions.

Business Need

To adopt modern best practice business processes, align with the University’s digital vision and provide a more strategic finance function.

Challenge

  • Dependence upon a highly customised 2007 implementation of E-Business Suite and limited development of reporting tools.
  • On-premise solution, hosted on Microsoft Azure, out of step with University’s digital strategy.
  • Existing interfaces hard to modify.
  • Desire to modify the existing chart of accounts.
  • Desire to adopt best practice business processes.
  • Desire to implement more on-system processes.

Staffordshire University is the leading UK digital University, holding the Gold TEF Award for Teaching Excellence, and the first University in Europe to introduce a ‘bot’ to enhance the student experience. The objective in implementing Cloud-based services was to align business systems with the University’s digital vision, and to take advantage of the modern best practices and data-driven intelligence built into the Oracle Cloud applications, seeking new tools to manage expenses, budgets and forecasts.

“We’re very happy the Oracle solution is now live for our core Finance Team and end users. Our goal is to deliver the best possible experience to our student community. Underpinning key administration functions with Oracle Finance Cloud will allow us to continually improve our services to students, staff, suppliers and external partners.” 

Sally McGill, Chief Financial Officer at Staffordshire University
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Solution at a glance

  • Oracle Financials Cloud Service
  • Oracle Purchasing Cloud Service
  • Justransform integration platform
  • PBCS reporting

The Namos approach

  • Deployment of out of the box Oracle Cloud functionality with a revised chart of accounts.
  • Introduction of Cash Management, Cloud Expenses, invoice scanning and Advanced Collections.
  • Oracle PBCS reporting platform to provide modern and flexible budget and forecasting capabilities.
  • Justransform integration platform to minimise the changes required to existing interfaces.

The results

  • Business processes reviewed and aligned to modern best practice in Oracle Fusion.
  • Automatic receipt application for Student Loan Company funds.
  • Roll out of self-service expenses significantly reducing manual effort.
  • Reduced manual effort recording supplier invoice data through the use of invoice scanning.
  • Increased automation and flexibility of dunning process
  • through the use of Advanced Collections.
  • Potential to develop single online source of the truth for budgets and forecasts in PBCS; now in development in-house.
  • Staffordshire University chose to use Namos Solutions as a Managed Service partner after the system went live.

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