I wanted to take this opportunity to provide you with a brief update on the activities of the Higher Education User Group (HEUG)™
In recent years HEUG has worked in partnership with Oracle to provide insight and examples of best practice to inform the design of their cloud products. A number of our members sit on the design councils for the products and our advisory groups also provide regular feedback in their monthly calls with Oracle strategists. The annual global conference (hosted in the US) along with the US regional and International conferences, and importantly our Cloud Symposium, have provided a platform for Oracle to showcase their new products and discuss emerging developments. Our Leadership Connection (formerly Executive Forum) has been particularly popular in this respect.
More recently, recognising that we have now reached a critical mass of members implementing or using the cloud SAAS products we are developing services specific to that cloud-customer community. This closely mirrors the circumstances that led to the creation of the HEUG some 20+ years ago. As such, supporting this new cloud customer community is a natural development for the HEUG, leveraging the toolset developed over 20+years, to provide communication channels, educational webinars from the community and from partners, and professional conferences.
Jo Ellen DiNucci from Boise State who was elected to our Board of Directors in March, and through Jo Ellen HEUG initially financially supported a couple of the locally organised meetings that have taken place. This has now developed to the stage of planning a cloud-specific event (two-day symposium) at the Oracle Conference Centre, Redwood City, California 4-5 February 2019. If someone from your institution would be interested in attending this event, please contact Brittany Moon (bmoon@heug.org), HEUG Deputy Executive Director.
The leadership from our early adopter institutions is immensely valuable as we see more institutions adopt and began their cloud projects, and we are pleased to have their input and collaboration in February. To support them a newly formed Oracle HCM/ERP ACT (Advocacy and Collaboration Team) has become a formal part of the HEUG structure and includes representation from:
- Boise State University
- Rutgers University
- Stanford University
- University of Kansas
- University of Derby, UK
- University of Wyoming
- Vanderbilt University
The goals of the group are to advocate to Oracle on behalf of higher education and to promote collaboration among all Oracle Cloud HCM and Finance users. The team is working with over 17 schools on three continents who are currently live on one of these products. Specifically, discussions around enhancements, post go-live support and tips and tricks are underway. Policy, process improvement, change management and technology are important to the dialog.
The HEUG has been a strong and common voice to Oracle (and PeopleSoft before that), through Oracle acquisitions and changes to their product portfolio, the cloud products being the latest. The effectiveness of speaking as a group, and particularly one that has commanded Oracle's respect for 20+ years, cannot be underestimated.