Cultural Impact of Enterprise Computing Platforms in Higher Education

Kaufman, Kai; Riley, Thomas; Jesse, Katherine

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Cultural Impact of Enterprise Computing Platforms in Higher Education

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Enterprise resource planning (ERP) software has long been used for operations management in the corporate world, handling everything from financial management to human resources (HR). Over time, it has become increasingly dominant in institutions of higher education, with a relatively small set of well-established, purpose-built software packages enjoying widespread use. However, for educational institutions, not all ERP software is created equal. ERP software that has its roots in managing standard corporate operations may not be fully up to the task of managing the entirety of an educational institution's operations, causing a marked decline in user satisfaction across faculty, staff, and students. To better understand this potential problem, our project evaluated the impact of Workday, an ERP that was originally designed as a software for corporations, on users at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), a STEM university in New England. Through a survey and interviews conducted with faculty, staff (including administrators) and students, we measured Workday's effectiveness at its ability to deliver complex administrative functionalities and adapt to unique educational traditions and policies of WPI. We identified several pain points, such as poor discoverability of documentation leading to a steep learning curve for various processes; administrative tasks being delegated to non-administrative individuals who rarely needed to do them and resulting increased friction due to the need to repeatedly re-learn those processes; and data modeling and design issues that have negatively affected the user experience (UX) by complicating fundamental tasks. Our discussion highlights a combination of technical and cultural factors that prevented Workday from the realization of its stated goals of achieving simplified and streamlined processes.

This report represents the work of one or more WPI undergraduate students submitted to the faculty as evidence of completion of a degree requirement. WPI routinely publishes these reports on its website without editorial or peer review.

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