Digital Enablement of Procurement in Education: Leveraging Oracle PeopleSoft for Transparent and Auditable Processes

Abstract

The introduction of digital transformation in the public educational institutions has revolutionized the procurement procedures by implementing Oracle PeopleSoft in order to tackle the fundamental issues of transparency, accountability, and efficiency of operations. Manual work processes, paper-based document-based processes, and other traditional procurement systems have established significant inefficiencies and compliance risk in higher education settings. Oracle PeopleSoft Financial Supply Chain Management proves to be a revolutionary tool that supports real-time visibility, compliance checkpoints with system-enforced compliance, and an audit-ready transaction trail. The platform is a combination of major procurement applications such as Purchasing, eProcurement, Strategic Sourcing, and Supplier Contracts to provide end-to-end functionality to the whole procurement process. The results of implementation illustrate that it achieved great gains in reducing processing time, reducing errors, improving the relationships with the vendors, and enhancing the overall operational performance without breaching regulatory compliance and without losing stakeholder trust due to transparent procurement practices.