Universidad de los Andes struggled with multiple systems and custom developments. They needed to modernize their technology ecosystem to offer a unified digital experience, reduce operational complexity, and move toward an institutional SaaS-first strategy.
The Ellucian Platform's central workspace brought together academic, administrative, and financial services in a personalized experience, connecting institutional systems through modern and interoperable architecture.
- Unified the digital experience for students, faculty, and staff in a single platform
- Simplified institutional processes and improved access to services with a modern and personalized experience
- Strengthened the university’s technology strategy by creating a foundation for interoperability, analytics, and artificial intelligence
to develop new functionality that previously required approximately three weeks
students connected through a unified digital space
With the implementation of [the Ellucian Platform's] central workspace, we left behind the era of siloed systems. Today we are in a much better position to build a truly simplified and coherent system that better serves our students and supports the growth of our institution."
With more than 11,000 students, and 1,300 faculty members, Universidad de los Andes, in Santiago, Chile, has established itself as an institution recognized for its academic excellence and for education centered on people.
In recent years, the institution undertook a digital transformation strategy aimed at building a more modern, sustainable technology model prepared for future growth. However, that vision faced a significant challenge: Academic, financial, and administrative information was distributed across multiple systems and custom developments that had evolved over nearly two decades.
The coexistence of different platforms made it difficult to offer a consistent experience for students, faculty, and staff, and also increased complexity for the technology team. According to Maricarmen Clemente, Director of Information Technologies and Systems, the institution's goals went far beyond updating technology.
"We want to have an impact on our institutional strategic planning, with a substantial improvement in the user experience and more sustainable technology governance, enabling institutional artificial intelligence and scalability to support future growth," she said.
That vision led the university to define a SaaS-first strategy, with the purpose of reducing technology complexity, facilitating interoperability, and preparing the institution for future analytics and artificial intelligence capabilities.
Unifying the Digital Experience
As part of that strategy, the university implemented the Ellucian Platform's central workspace, creating a single access point where students, faculty, and staff can view information, access services, and complete processes from a unified digital experience.
The new capability integrated the main institutional systems, allowing the university community to move beyond the need to navigate multiple applications and portals to complete everyday tasks.
Beyond simplifying access to information, the Ellucian Platform's central workspace became a key component for connecting academic and administrative processes within the same digital environment.
"It is our single platform for accessing information and allows us to operate better day to day," said Maricarmen.
Driving Adoption and Institutional Efficiency
The university implemented the central workspace capability through a phased rollout, beginning with the highest-impact functionality for students and progressively expanding the platform to address the needs of faculty, staff, and alumni. This approach helped accelerate adoption, incorporate improvements continuously, and generate value from the early stages of the project.
According to Francisco Figueroa, Head of Undergraduate and Graduate Development, the implementation made it possible to offer users a much simpler experience, regardless of the device they used to access it.
"Central workspace is an intuitive, easy-to-use platform that is very focused on the end user," he said "Schedules, courses, grades — it has been clear that students have used it a lot, and it greatly streamlines students' daily activities." From a single space, students can now view schedules, grades, account statements, certificates, and academic progress, while faculty and staff access the tools they use daily without having to switch between different applications.By bringing together schedules, courses, class lists, and other academic services in the same environment, the central workspace also reduced administrative burden and allowed faculty to devote more time to activities that generate greater value for students.
For staff, the platform simplified processes that previously required consulting different systems or performing manual tasks. Information is now available from a single access point, improving operational efficiency and making it easier to serve the entire university community.
These changes directly respond to one of the strategic objectives the university defined from the beginning of the project: "to offer a modern, simple, and coherent experience for all its users."
Accelerating Institutional Innovation
For years, many of the university's systems depended on custom developments built on legacy technologies. Maintaining that infrastructure required a considerable effort from the technical team and limited the speed with which they could respond to new institutional needs.
According to Clemente, the adoption of modern tools and reusable components made it possible to significantly accelerate the development of new functionality and reduce the technical complexity of operations.
"Previously, development took us three weeks; now it takes three days," she said "We improved quite a bit."
The ability to respond more quickly allows the university to implement continuous improvements without relying on major development projects, adding new functionality as the needs of students, faculty, and staff evolve.
Building a Platform for the Future
For Universidad de los Andes, the implementation of the Ellucian Platform's central workspace represents much more than a new capability. It is part of a broader institutional strategy to build a technology ecosystem capable of evolving alongside the needs of the university and its community.
"We want to continue accelerating our transition toward the institutional SaaS model," Clemente said.
The university plans to gradually expand the functionality available to students, faculty, staff, and alumni, incorporating new digital services and strengthening integration with the rest of its technology ecosystem. At the same time, it will seek to consolidate a platform that facilitates institutional analytics and lays the foundation for incorporating artificial intelligence capabilities in a scalable and sustainable way.
"We want a technology platform that enables institutional artificial intelligence and has the scalability needed to keep growing," Celemente said.
Beyond technology, Universidad de los Andes sees digital transformation as an opportunity to offer a better experience to its entire community. By eliminating fragmentation between systems and creating a single workspace, the institution didn't only simplify processes; it built a platform prepared to respond more quickly to changes facing higher education and to continue driving innovation in the coming years.
