To advance the university’s mission in the face of many headwinds, it is more important than ever to lean in to technology and process efficiency. Fewer systems will mean fewer costs, less time on complicated workflows, and easier compliance with changing regulations.

Across Cornell’s multiple campuses, institutional leaders have identified four major challenges that can be addressed by improving five types of technologies that underpin six common business functions.

Four Challenges

The current IT environment at Cornell is characterized by technical debt, system duplication, distributed processes, and unreliable data. The Cornell Experience Modernization Initiative (CEMI, said as “See Me”) represents these characteristics as the Four Ds: Debt, Duplication, Distribution, and Data.

1. Debt: Many of the campuses’ systems are outdated and in need of upgrades. This is called “technical debt.”
2. Duplication: There are many instances of similar software in different parts of the university. This includes big systems like Kuali Financial System and SAP, SuccessFactors and Workday, and hundreds of smaller systems, including custom tools grown to fill gaps in larger systems that were still evolving when Cornell became one of their earliest adopters.  
3. Distribution: The university organization is itself highly distributed. Over time, many solutions developed in tandem to perform similar tasks.
4. Data: The lack of unified data and data definitions make it difficult to hone in on the best decisions in a timely manner.

While the large administrative systems and the hundreds of smaller applications were chosen carefully and were the best decision at the time, Cornell’s needs have changed and technology today is much more capable and more critical to the institution’s future.

Six Business Functions

Streamlining and aligning Cornell’s diverse systems and data sets can reduce repetitive work, enabling faculty, staff, students, researchers, and other community members to focus more on advancing the university’s mission and less on administration.

The functional areas that stand to gain the greatest optimizations in terms of cost savings and efficiency include:

1. Advancement
2. Budget
3. Finance
4. Human Resources
5. Research
6. Student Services

Five Technology Targets

Those six functional areas share overlapping data and technology systems. The five primary technology targets CEMI’s stakeholders and participants will address are:

1. Data and Analytics for unified campus reporting. This will not only meet an urgent need, but it will help identify problems that need to be addressed in the new solution.
2. Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems such as Kuali/KFS, Jenzabar, PeopleSoft, SAP, SuccessFactors, and Workday. Each of these has a related ecosystem of supporting systems for specialized functions like procurement or financial aid.
3. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems like Slate and Salesforce. These are being examined as possible tools for filling gaps or improving the experience of a new unified system.
4. “Gap Apps” or smaller ERP or CRM adjacent solutions that have developed over time to fill functions that should be in the core systems but were missing or not optimal at the time these systems were adopted.
5. Identity Management for a unified login across our major campuses. For example, Ithaca and Cornell Tech use NetIDs while Weill Cornell Medicine’s campuses use CWIDs, which they share with New York Presbyterian and Columbia. This is a very complex problem with important security and usability implications.

Many other systems and tools will be touched on by this analysis, such as pre-award research administration, Microsoft 365 email, Amazon Web Services, and cloud storage solutions. But they are not the primary focus of this analysis.

Career Growth Opportunities

CEMI introduces new technologies and processes that reflect the broader changes impacting every industry. Learning the new best practices, skills, and tools will create opportunities for individuals to grow across the university.