Recently, California State University (CSU), one of the largest public university systems in the United States, had standardized its financial, human resources, student administration, and alumni development systems across all 23 of its campuses and the Office of the Chancellor on Oracle's (News - Alert) PeopleSoft Applications, hosted on the Unisys Hosted Secure Private Cloud Solution.

The officials at CSU said that this move is part of the university's strategic plan, Access to Excellence, through which CSU has committed to take advantage of technology to meet the future educational needs of students, faculty, and staff.

To get a clear picture about the financial operations, the University is using PeopleSoft Financial Management, including general ledger, billing, accounts payable, accounts receivable, and purchasing.

Previously, the university worked with a separate instance of PeopleSoft Financial Management, but the new system has consolidated them all onto a single, university-wide instance to provide a unified view of financial operations, making this the largest single higher education deployment of PeopleSoft Financial Management in the United States.

“In order to continue to meet the goals of our strategic plan, we felt it was critical to standardize our operational processes--both in the back office and those that our students touch every day--by maximizing our technology investment and cutting costs,” said Larry Furukawa-Schlereth, CFO of Sonoma State University, who's also chairman of CSU's Common Management System Executive Committee.

Furukawa-Schlereth said that having a single view of all important information in one system helps the California State University continue to offer excellent educational opportunities at affordable costs as they help shape the future quality of civic and economic life in California.

CSU has also adapted PeopleSoft Campus Solutions to manage its student academic operations, including scheduling and registering for classes, calculating and collecting fees, awarding financial aid and assessing students' academic progress.