News

Oracle Launches Higher Ed Constituent Hub

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 10/08/09

Oracle has launched a constituent management application intended to let institutions create a comprehensive view of applicants, students, alumni, faculty, donors, and staff. The Higher Education Constituent Hub was co-built with LumenData, an Oracle-focused software development firm.

The application provides features for data consolidation, cleansing, governance, and sharing. Data regarding a person can be drawn from one or multiple student information, human resource, and customer relationship management systems. The data administrator can construct a master version of a person's record with a single linking ID across all data systems. The application does matching through proprietary hybrid matching algorithms and can perform fuzzy search matching. In the area of data cleansing, the program can clean up, standardize, and enhance current and historical constituent addresses using postal directories and verify addresses. Constituent data--campus ID, new address, name change, and e-mail updates--can be distributed to subscribing systems, such as housing, dining, parking, alumni, and financial aid. Common functions in the application are delivered as business and Web services.

"To deliver [master data management] (MDM) solutions that customers can rapidly and cost effectively deploy, Oracle has developed targeted hubs that address industry specific data management challenges," said Pascal Laik, an Oracle vice president. "Oracle is an established leader in the education community and, by working with LumenData, we are able to offer fast MDM higher education deployment capabilities. Oracle Higher Education Constituent Hub will deliver more accurate constituent data that can enable higher education institutions to streamline systems, reduce data errors, improve decision making, and significantly reduce costs."