UC Berkeley Adopts Financial Platform for Grant Management

The University of California, Berkeley has implemented a grants management system to help researchers and administrators track and report on grant milestones and spending.

UC Berkeley managed more than $700 million in research funding in 2012-2013 and needed to streamline its administrative and grants management process so researchers and administrators could have more time to focus on education and research. Since the university was already using Oracle PeopleSoft Financials, it made sense to implement PeopleSoft Grants for the grants management process.

UC Berkeley upgraded to PeopleSoft Financials 9.2 in preparation for the integration of PeopleSoft Grants. According to information from Oracle, Financials 9.2 offers an improved user interface and workflow with more than 20 functional enhancements that enable the university to reduce its customizations by more than 20 percent. By reducing customizations, the university will be able to "lower the cost of ownership by reducing the in-house maintenance effort and the test cycle times required to stay up to date with current releases," said Delphine Regalia, assistant vice chancellor and controller at  UC Berkeley, in a prepared statement.

The university partnered with Huron Consulting Group, which completed the upgrade under budget and three weeks ahead of schedule. Once the upgrade was complete, they implemented PeopleSoft Grants in July 2014. According to information from Oracle, the university's integration of PeopleSoft Financials and Grants will enable faculty researchers and administrators "to track grant award milestones, monitor spending and expenses to ensure they stay within billing limits, meet sponsor reporting deadlines and accelerate invoicing."

With the completion of the upgrade and integration, the university plans to add more functionality through 2015, including user interface enhancements and an integrated student system.

About the Author

Leila Meyer is a technology writer based in British Columbia. She can be reached at [email protected].

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