Educause Hot Topic: Transforming Higher Education with Cloud and AI

As we gear up for EDUCAUSE 2024, I am thrilled to share how Astute Business Solutions is helping institutions using Banner and PeopleSoft leverage AI and cloud innovations. Our GenAI-powered Student Help Desk, for example, offers 24/7 personalized support to students, enhancing engagement and automating administrative processes. Additionally, our solutions in disaster recovery and ransomware protection provide higher ed institutions with essential safeguards against data loss and downtime.

At EDUCAUSE, we will also be highlighting key AI-driven use cases:

• GenAI Student Help Desk: This tool automates responses to student queries, enhancing support availability and engagement while reducing the workload on administrative teams. It is a game-changer for improving the student experience.
• Automated Student and Faculty Forms: We offer solutions to streamline the processing of faculty and student forms, reducing manual work and speeding up approvals. This automation enhances efficiency across the institution.
• AI for Institutional Reporting: Data-driven decision-making is critical for universities. Our AI-based reporting solutions empower institutions to analyze key metrics for student performance, resource management, and enrollment forecasts, all in real-time using Oracle Analytics Cloud and Oracle Autonomous Data Warehouse with built-in AI Assistant and ML Algorithms.
• Automated Invoice Processing: We offer AstuteAP, an AI-powered invoice automation solution that eliminates manual processing of invoices and takes you from zero to up to 80% touchless processing in weeks.  

On the Cloud Infrastructure side, we are helping universities improve their operational resilience and scalability:

• Disaster Recovery and Ransomware Protection: Our cloud-based disaster recovery solutions ensure minimal downtime by providing automated backups and real-time data replication. This ensures that mission-critical systems remain protected against potential disruptions. By using immutable backups and air-gapped solutions, we are helping customers keep their data secure in the Cloud. 
• Banner and PeopleSoft Migration to Oracle Cloud: Moving legacy ERP systems like Banner and PeopleSoft to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure offers institutions greater scalability, enhanced performance, and cost savings, all while maintaining core functionalities.
• Banner and PeopleSoft Modernization on Cloud: Many of our customers are continuing to invest in PeopleSoft and Banner ERP while also looking at long-term options of moving to SaaS applications. Astute is helping customers modernize ERP by improving UI/UX, improving workflow, improving security, reducing technical debt or customization, improving security, and improving performance. Lastly but also most importantly, we are helping our customers reduce the operational overheads of managing and maintaining ERP by using Cloud automation tools and Astute proprietary solutions. 

Many institutions have already seen the benefits. For example, Gallaudet University, the University of Idaho, Frederick Community College, San Diego Community College District, and Oregon State University have successfully migrated their systems to the cloud, significantly improving their system performance, scalability, and cost-efficiency.

At EDUCAUSE 2024, we will dive deeper into how these solutions are modernizing IT infrastructures and transforming student experiences across campuses. I look forward to discussing these advancements with you!

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