The Client
Established in 1868, the University of California system has 10 campuses, nine of which enroll both undergraduate and graduate students. Collectively, the colleges, alumni and institutions of the University of California system comprise the most advanced, comprehensive postsecondary educational system in the world.
The Situation
With nearly 250,000 faculty on the payroll within the University of California (UC) system, the UCPATH project aimed to transform the way UC dealt with HR, benefits and payroll services with University of California employees. UC’s call center received numerous calls related to employee services, and the system needed a better way to empower employees, providing them with self-service tools that would help them resolve employee services questions. The team wanted to develop UCPATH as a pilot program, then roll it out across campuses.
The Challenge
The project presented a number of technical challenges. Integrating information from UC’s human resources management system Peoplesoft into Drupal wasn’t impossible, but it was complex. UC also needed a single sign-on cookie-based authentication mechanism so that a seamless user experience could be presented, but there were various integration points along the way. UC and its consulting partner InFlight tapped Appnovation to help overcome the technological barriers.
The Solution
Appnovation created a role-dependent dashboard and overall portal with readily available benefits information, policies and other HR-related information. Appnovation maintained a strong relationship and cadence between Inflight and University of California, making sure expectations were managed and short-term objectives were achieved.
The Results
Results since the launch of UCPATH have been amazing. Today, almost 80 percent of employee and faculty questions are answered via self-service functionality through UCPATH, and calls to the center have been reduced to 20 percent. Of the 20 percent remaining, 70 percent are targeted for first touch resolution by Employee Services.