Enhancing Creighton University’s Resilience to Staff Turnover with Application Managed Services

Creighton University, one of the largest Catholic health professions educators in the United States, is guided by a strategic vision of “lighting the way” for its students and community members. This inspiring vision was recently tested by significant staffing shortages. The retirement of key IT personnel created critical gaps in knowledge and capability, and an increasingly competitive local job market made it challenging to recruit specialized talent. Furthermore, the University’s impending plans to transition from an on-premise enterprise resource planning (ERP) system to the cloud complicated hiring decisions, exacerbating the staffing challenges and hindering critical maintenance initiatives such as security updates, patching, and role management.

The Challenge: Under-Supported ERP System

These staffing challenges left Creighton University’s Banner ERP system under-supported, threatening its continuity and efficiency. To address these issues, Creighton University’s leadership turned to CampusWorks, a trusted partner engaged following their migration to Banner 9, to help optimize their understanding and use of the system and provide Application Managed Services for four years.

Application Managed Services Enable Creighton Staff to Focus on Strategic Initiatives

With CampusWorks’ dedicated management, the goal was to stabilize the Banner environment and lead more complex projects that enhance it, such as migrating to Banner Self-Service, enhancing security, and reducing customizations. A key aspect of this partnership was CampusWorks’ ability to provide a seamless, remote service model. This approach reduced the need for onsite personnel and allowed the University to tap into expertise from across the country, ensuring the quality of service was unaffected by local job market conditions.

Proactively Addressing FAFSA Fallout

During this engagement, Creighton University, along with most institutions nationwide, faced additional challenges in Financial Aid related to the delayed Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) and subsequent aid calculation errors. CampusWorks provided extra functional support to the University’s Financial Aid Department, enabling them to commit to financial aid packages faster than many other institutions. This gave Creighton a competitive advantage in the eyes of prospective students, helping the university surpass its freshman class enrollment goal.

Impact and Outcomes

While CampusWorks is only a few months into its four-year contract, this partnership is already transforming a potentially disruptive situation into an opportunity for stabilization and growth. CampusWorks has helped Creighton University improve the performance and reliability of its Banner environment, resulting in a 57% reduction in outstanding IT tickets within just the first few months. This decrease in outstanding tickets has reduced cycle time and increased user satisfaction. Additionally, CampusWorks’ dedicated support of Creighton’s Banner environment has allowed the University’s IT team to shift their focus from routine maintenance to more strategic initiatives, such as implementing a new student portal.

By transitioning critical application management responsibilities to CampusWorks, Creighton has been able to maintain continuity during a period of vulnerability and position the University for future innovation.

Voice of the Client