Case Study: Cornell University achieves streamlined, flexible HR and payroll operations with Workday

Cornell University - Customer Case Study

Cornell University, a large private research institution with roughly 22,000 employees, needed to reconcile its highly decentralized academic units with a drive for administrative efficiency. The legacy PeopleSoft HR/payroll system lacked flexible self-service and made it hard to scale for fast-paced hiring and shared-service consolidation, prompting the Reimagining Cornell initiative to seek a modern cloud solution.

Cornell chose Workday Human Capital Management and Payroll to unify HR and payroll into a configurable cloud platform with manager/employee self-service, automated approvals, and linked processes for faster hiring. The result: lower transaction and maintenance costs, preserved unit-specific workflows, quicker deployments without disruptive upgrades, and freed HR resources to focus on strategic initiatives while collaborating with Workday on higher-education needs.

Cornell University

Mary Opperman

Vice President, Human Resource