In a bid to improve the overall employee experience at Concordia, Human Resources (HR), Financial Services (FS) and Instructional and Information Technology Services (IITS) are collaborating to simplify and standardize administrative processes at the university.
Project UNITY comes after consultations with the community that took place over the past few years, including detailed needs assessments, surveys and community exposure to possible software solutions.
Supported by a multi-functional project team, HR and FS are working together with Concordia’s Instructional and Information Technology Services (IITS) to replace the current aging Human Resources system (Empath) and Financial Services system Millennium (Banner) with a modern ecosystem based on SAP solutions — with an emphasis on mordernizing processes for both departments.
‘A unified and harmonized employee experience’
The objectives of project UNITY are to improve employee experience and efficiencies, expand reporting and analytical tools to support timely and effective decision making, and enable strategic support to the university.
“The project aims to deliver a harmonized employee experience for faculty and staff members, and the Concordia community as a whole,” says Denis Cossette, Concordia’s chief financial officer, who is co-executive sponsor of the project, along with Roger Côté, vice-president, Services.
“We want to provide Concordia’s faculty and staff with self-serve capabilities and real time data,” Côté says.
“The new ways of working will reduce time spent on administrative tasks, provide more data for enhanced decision-making and strengthen our ability to focus on pursuing academic and research growth.”
Côté explains that past input from the Concordia community also called for a reduction of non-value-added manual and paper-supported tasks.
“Those desired improvements in our processes and systems are top of mind for the project team,” he says.