Shaping future talent with Oracle

We have invited Kaushika Jayalath, Solutions Consultant at Oracle Corporation, to explore how their strategic partnership with Australia and New Zealand universities bridge the digital skills gap and enhance student employability.

Learn more about their hands-on cloud technology experience, their broader impact, and Oracle’s role in addressing the evolving needs of both students and employers in a digital-first world.

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Transcript

Tasha Day:

Today I have the pleasure of speaking with Kaushika Jayalath on how Oracle’s strategic partnership with Swinburne University is transforming education by providing students with hands-on experience in cloud-based business and technology solutions, bridging the digital skills gap and enhancing the employability through digital badges and certifications.

A little bit about our speaker today, thank you very much for being here, Kaushika. Kaushika is a Solutions Consultant at Oracle Corporation, where he focuses on leveraging cloud technology to drive enterprise transformations, enhance business processes, and implement sustainable change management. In addition to his role at Oracle, he serves as a non-executive director of the CPA Australia, and has background in senior finance, accounting, business analysis, and project management roles.

Kaushika is deeply committed to closing the digital skills gap, and towards this means, he shares his expertise as an industry mentor and guest speaker at Monash University, Swinburne University, and the University of Queenstown, all in Australia. Kaushika, thank you so much for joining us.

Kaushika Jayalath:

Thanks for having me as well, Tasha. Pleasure to be here.

Tasha Day:

Thank you so much for being here. I would love it if you could tell us a little bit about yourself, your background and how you ended up where you are at Oracle.

Kaushika Jayalath:

As you said, my name is Kaushika, but a lot of people here call me K, whichever is easier. I am originally from Sri Lanka and I moved to Australia as an international student, so I’m very much part and parcel of the Australian higher education system. I moved here as an international student, I then started working within the higher education sector. I worked in a university in Victoria, which is in Melbourne. I’ve worked as an accounting professional for quite a while, focusing on the higher education sector, so a number of finance roles before I jumped into transformations.

I’m very passionate about helping transform both the business side of higher education, but also the academic side of higher education, and that is part and parcel of why I do this. I did that for a while from inside of the universities and now I’m trying to do the same thing from outside of the universities as part of the industry.

Oracle is a technology corporation, and it does a lot of different things: Everything from, applications to cloud infrastructure to the hardware, pretty much the entire end to end suite of what you would consider technology.

I sit as an Enterprise Solutions Consultant for Australia, and New Zealand universities, so I work on any and all things higher education from a few different lenses. You are looking at strategy, business development, at the solutions themselves in terms of solution engineering, and then the change management aspect of things as well.

It is like moving the Titanic in terms of trying to change direction of universities in this region, because they are so big, so complex. There is a limited number of universities and they do a lot.

If you look at the Australia and New Zealand region, we have around 50 universities who are massive in terms of their size, so when you are trying to change anything, it is like trying to turn the Titanic.

Tasha Day:

It is really nice to speak to you as someone who has worked on the academic and industry side, trying to connect up the two, which is really what we are all about here at UIIN.

You mentioned Oracle is a technology company, and we are here today to talk about your partnerships with Swinburne University and touch upon partnerships with other universities, which suggests a new direction for the company towards the education side of things.

Can you tell us how does Oracle see itself evolving into a core partner in education?

Kaushika Jayalath:

What people don’t realise is that Oracle has actually a 40+-year -old history with education. In the past, there were companies like PeopleSoft or E-Business Suite, and it is all Oracle now. So, universities have been using Oracle for a very long period of time to ensure its back-office functions operate well, but also the student experience is what it needs to be.

What Oracle is doing now is, as of late is moving away from that point of view of Oracle just being a technology vendor and more looking at itself as a strategic partner for success, no matter what industry they are in. So Oracle is involved in oil and gas, retail, manufacturing, government, education, healthcare. And in every one of these industries, it is looking at itself as a strategic partner for success, not just a technology vendor.

For us, the old questions that we did ourselves were “How can we give our customers technology that helps them be more efficient and can help them optimise their costs and be better in what they do, get their KPIs to perform better?”. Now – let’s take higher education as an example – the questions we ask are “How do we help them improve their research capability?, “How do we help the researchers’ experience?”, “How do we help recruit and retain students better?”, “How can we build more industry partnerships with universities so that they can then promote transnational education and campus internationalisation options?”, “How do we then help their new business models, mergers, or spin outs – that university stuff?”. The questions moved away from just the operational questions we used to ask, to more strategic questions, because that drives the type of solutions we position and the partnerships we build.

Tasha Day:

Really deep partnerships, and amazing that you are getting involved in this facilitation of all of the innovation in the university.

Kaushika Jayalath:

For us, we don’t limit ourselves to looking at just the learning and teaching aspect of things, we look at the research side of things and everything in between: The academic experience, the researcher experience, the student experience, and the professional staff as well, because they all play a part in the engine of what a university is.

Tasha Day:

Definitely. About what you look for on the partner side and who you are wanting to partner with, could you tell us a little bit about what the driving force was behind Oracle’s decision to engage specifically with Swinburne University?

Kaushika Jayalath:

Oracle started an initiative that is been out in the U.S. for a very long time. It has just recently been introduced to the Australian and New Zealand region as well, and it has really driven by the digital skills shortage.

Oracle works with a lot of enterprise customers – for us, an enterprise customer is a business with more than 500 staff. We work with the CFOs, CIOs and CHROs of these companies, and they say: “Thank you for the great software and the great technology. Now who knows how to use it?” Because what they are seeing is a shortage in digital skills, and they don’t want to necessarily spend six months training up a graduate with a commerce degree that has no idea of how to use an enterprise ERP system.

I can attest to that myself, when I graduated, I left not knowing what an ERP is, but that is exactly the gap we are trying to deal with and act as the bridge between universities. In that way, the partnership enables a university to create a graduate that is skilled in all the knowledge-related business processes and the knowledge and the accreditation they need to then be employed in a successful organisation.

Tasha Day:

Cultivating the skills that are actually relevant for today is really important, it makes everyone’s life easier and more fulfilling.

To dive into the nitty gritty of the skills you are teaching, you just mentioned ERP which, for the uninitiated – correct me if I’m wrong – is Enterprise Resource Planning?

Kaushika Jayalath:

Exactly. We go into what we call HCM, which is Human Capital Management and CX, which is Customer Experience. In other words, marketing and anything related to sales.

Oracle has had a big history with universities anyways, so we have engagements across universities through complete lines of business that we have called Oracle Academy and Oracle University. These are education arms of the organisation that work with universities, but historically, what we have done is we worked with the IT faculties and the IT education arms of universities

Employers come to us and say: “I don’t really need I.T. students as much anymore, I need a business student who understands a bit of the I.T.”. The problem they are facing is finding the level of digital skills with the right level of business process knowledge as well.

What we rolled out in Australia and New Zealand as a completely free offering for any university that wants to take it up. We say: “Here are all of the business processes that surround an enterprise resource planning system, a human capital management system, or a customer experience system. Now, teach the students the business process that sit above the theory that you are teaching anyways”.

If I was to use an accounting example, accountants learn what depreciation is. They learn the theory: “Here’s the debits, here’s the credits, this is how you put it into a financial report”. They learn all of the theory pieces in bits. What we do is teach or present the content so that the academics can then teach where do these little bits of reporting and depreciation sit within the business process.

That will be an asset acquisition to the entire business process. What the student sees is: “How is depreciation done within an ERP?”, “What do I have to actually click to run a depreciation report?”, “How do I actually do this as a month-end or a fortnightly activity?”. We are giving the student that level of visibility of what happens on the ground.

Things like how AI is used for budgeting and reporting are things that are very theoretical when taught, but students don’t work with them in class. So that is where we are saying: “All right, let’s show you what an actual, generative-AI-driven management report might look like”. So they get to actually see it and understand the skills they need to develop in order to use something.

Tasha Day:

Actually being able to go through the process and see it happen is such a relaxing process, not neccesarily when you are learning about it, but then when you go to the workforce and you are like: “Okay, actually I have been through this before”. It’s such an asset when you actually get out there.

I’m curious, how do you find that students are responding to learning these skills and responding to your kind of involvement in the program?

Kaushika Jayalath:

So we have rolled this out across two universities in Australia and one university in New Zealand already. And, mind you, we are not advertising this for our profit, this is a free engagement and any university can come and sign up with us. What we have seen already is the students are asked to learn one thing, they do that and they immediately start learning other things as well.

Now, the benefit of Oracle’s cloud applications is that it is all built on the one data model: If you learn the finance business processes, there is a natural progression into the marketing processes, or the HR processes, because everything is built on the same data model.

If I’m a student that is interested in learning budgeting, but I also want to run my own business and therefore I want to figure out how to do the marketing work, I’m not going to be using different applications or systems. It is all built within the same data model.

Students start learning, say, the budgeting process and immediately realise: “Wait a minute, I can actually learn the marketing piece as well”. And they start learning on their own.

So the universities that have started it, started by almost piloting it out with smaller pieces but what they have noticed is that the students then want more because they realise the real world applications of it.

Case in point, we have even had students organise events, without their degree in play, and said “Can you bring Oracle solution engineers to the university? We would like to learn more”. So we have been actually doing after-hours guest lectures as well on things like sustainability, AI in budgeting and reporting, and the practical complexities with the business transformation.

These are things that are very difficult for an academic to position as theory, because it’s not theory, it’s practical use. So we are bringing that industrial knowledge in and it gives, say, the student who is studying a bachelor of business, a very rounded skill set where they:

• Know the theory. That is absolutely important, you need to know, your accounting standards and your theory, and how it’s put into practice.
• Get to see what that actually looks like within a software and they get to hear from the technology company saying “Here are the complexities you will face”.

And because Oracle works with high profile customers, everyone from Uber to FedEx, and a lot of banks use Oracle as well, we are able to tap into a base of C-suite executives (CFOs, CIOs, etc.), who then come and speak to these students about  what they need to focus on.

That relationship is growing. It started out of a very straightforward partnership around giving access to a learning platform, but it has morphed into something a lot bigger.

Tasha Day:

It has taken on a life of its own. When we tap into students’ ability to become inspired and have their own agency to learn more, students are learning skills, but they are also learning about their own passion and their own ability to do things and explore a topic further.

Kaushika Jayalath:

We get a lot of students engaging with us that have their own startups that want to get into the consulting firms, because they realise that every consulting firm has a technology practice, and there is this really nice crossroads between business and technology. They might join as business analysts, as implementation consultants, as the boots on the ground, but they realised there is a massive job market for that because those roles don’t exist within an actual business, they might sit within consulting firms.

Tasha Day:

They develop a skill set that is relevant between different roles and industries, which is indeed very cool. I know that part of your collaboration with these universities involves the provision of digital badges for when students complete each of these modules and, if they complete the whole suite of modules, they can receive also the Oracle certification.

This is something quite new in terms of education and moving into digital badges. How do you view the role of these digital credentials in enhancing a student’s professional profile when they are entering the job market?

Kaushika Jayalath:

There are two answers to that. First is Oracle, like a lot of other technology companies, has been offering digital badges and certification for a while. Historically, though, what has happened is that it is something that has been tapped into by working professionals, not necessarily universities.

If you go on LinkedIn even now and search “#OracleUniversity”, you will see so many people sharing their certifications and badges, and the list will be endless because that certification is what gets them recognised by recruiters for Oracle affiliated jobs. It is the kind of thing you can share on LinkedIn, on Twitter, and you can put on your resume.

Now, all we have done is we have just given access to that same learning platform for universities, for students, for free within a packaged program. And the objective of packaging it up is so that it is not too complex and it doesn’t overwhelm both the students and the university, so they know exactly what they can tap into.

Now, the other side of it is the fact that knowledge is increasingly becoming democratised. So it is easier to learn something now than it has ever been before. What we think about is what is the value add that we can provide in an economy where knowledge is democratised. That is where the badges and certifications come into play because, yes, knowledge is democratised, but the certification and the badging, if you weren’t part of this program is going to cost you.

Now the badging is structured almost like a stackable micro-credential program, so you learn one thing, you get a badge. You learn a second thing, you get a badge, and as you build on it, you gain all of these badges. For us, it is a way of adding value back to the university student and the university itself so that the student leaves with the knowledge and the certification or the accreditation and they are able to say to any employer: “I know how to use Oracle ERP. Look, I have the proof for it”. And so it makes that conversation a lot easier.

The degree is absolutely important, but we have now given something in a democratised knowledge economy that makes that student stand out.

Tasha Day:

I think it nods to the value of the university degree and this new way of democratising and certifying knowledge that we have, and allowing them to both coexist together, which I think is very important in this day and age.

The partnership with Swinburne is in its early stages, but you have mentioned before that you have had other partnerships with universities over a longer period of time, such as Monash University. Do you have any success stories or direct feedback from students or faculty that you could share with us from that collaboration?

Kaushika Jayalath:

Monash University’s program started almost as a pilot program last year. And from then to now, it has grown quite exponentially. There is bachelor of business courses that actually teach the Oracle ERP content as part of its course content. The lecturer does a lecture on accounting information systems, and it is followed by tutorial workout of our learning platform. They have embedded it in such a way that the student actually gets some badging by the end of the semester, so it is a nice to-have, but also the student gets access to the learning platform, and then can learn as many other things as they want.

The example I gave before was actually one of those, whereas students went in to learn budgeting and reporting and came out of it knowing how to run a marketing lead to opportunity process as well. Those kinds of things are real life examples. There is an accounting honors society there called Beta Alpha Psi, who banded together and said: ” We would like to learn more about sustainability”. So it is those students that have come to us and said: “Can you come and teach us more because these areas are not covered”. So sustainability was a major one that they wanted to cover, understand how sustainability applies in practice and how these applications embed sustainability within their processes.

We had similar ones on data visualisation. They wanted to see what AI looks like in data visualisation, so we actually showed: “Here is a report, here’s a dashboard, here’s the data that it’s feeding in the back of it. By the way, no one is entering any kind of narrative for these reports because that is all AI driven, but you have to still check whether it is accurate”. So we are showing them how the human in the loop concept still applies, but they see AI and machine learning embedded within the reporting that they will build.

On top of that, we have even had their MBA program adopt some of these concepts as well. So they have got a master’s of business administration, and they introduced some of these concepts in this year. Monash is actually developing a bachelor of digital business next year, and they asked us to be a part of the panel that advises on what that program will have as well.

It is taking a life of its own but it is really because what we have done on our end has introduced the universities into a learning system or a practical application system that employers have had to pay for. So it is a win-win situation: the employer gets those skilled workers quicker, and the students who leave those universities have a set of skills that differentiate them from other graduates.

Tasha Day:

That was such an interesting point that you talked us through with the fact that everyone is benefiting from these kind of solutions, and especially I think that it was speaking about Oracle being a strategic partner and you show how you come in with the university.

You have a solution which is beneficial for them, build trust as partners, and then actually it spirals on to other types of activities within the collaboration curriculum, co-design and co-delivery.

Kaushika Jayalath:

On top of that, we have run two separate virtual internships with Monash as well, where the students have come to us and said: “We want to solve this sustainability development goal related issue. So this UN’s SDG problem, we want to solve it. And we want to use Oracle and apply Oracle applications to solve it”.

And we have said: “Have at it. Here is the knowledge, you tell us what the idea is”. And we go through a four-week internship program that was run by Monash University, Monash Malaysia and Warwick University, where we basically heard pitches from students about how they want to solve problems.

Tasha Day:

Really nice, having that direct interface with students, what they want to know and how you can help them. We just have a couple of minutes left, I would like to ask, Kaushika, if there is anything else that you would like to share with us about the role that Oracle is playing in shaping future talent in Australia and all over the globe. And any advice you have for students and professionals who are looking to get involved in basically ensuring that they are ready for this kind of ever-changing digital economy.

Kaushika Jayalath:

First of all, if you are a university in Australia or New Zealand, this program is available for free. It is for you to take on and run, we are happy to support you in any way necessary. It is a new program, so you have a voice in molding it into what you want it to be as well. There is a digital skills shortage and universities are struggling to position their value proposition in the current economy, so it’s a win-win situation.

Outside of that, for students or graduates who are looking to move into the massive, very overwhelming workplace that you will enter, you need to always think about what will help you differentiate yourself from the rest, and in the current economy, digital skills is absolutely it. That applies to everything, from prompt engineering to critical thinking and problem solving.

Data analysis is still the number one required skill that employers ask for. Critical thinking and problem solving is second and, in the age of generative AI, prompt engineering is third. Knowing how to use those skills outside of just ChatGPT and how businesses are using it within business applications is absolutely crucial, and that is where Oracle adds an advantage.

Oracle has built its AI capabilities in a way that the AI comes to you, you don’t have to send your data out of your ecosystem into a large language model sitting somewhere else. That means the AI comes to you, your data doesn’t go anywhere else.

In that reality, you have security, but you now need to know how to use those AI tools that are given to you to create a vision. That is what we focus on. Even the example that I gave before around data visualisation, there is a reason why the way we position it, you have the AI tools with you, your data is available within the same platform. You figure out how to best engineer your prompts so it gives you the best result.

Tasha Day:

How to make the best use of the tools which are constantly becoming available to us, and keeping sharp and up to date with that. That is amazing.

Thank you so much, Kaushika. Could you tell us where people could find out more about Oracle and their partnerships with universities or where they can directly get in contact with you, for example, for more information about this?

Kaushika Jayalath:

Both are options. If you quite literally just Google “Oracle higher education”, you will see, wherever region you might be in, there will be an Oracle in higher education website that you can access. Otherwise, you can always reach out to me, I’m available via my email or LinkedIn, and I will send you to the right person accordingly.

Tasha Day:

Great. Thank you so much and thank you, everyone for joining.

 We also have a range of more long-form events such as workshops, how-to sessions and training programs where you can learn practical skills to apply to your own work. UIIN members get complimentary access and discounts on these services. So please head to our website at uiin.org/membership to see how we can help you.

 Thank you so much, Kaushika. This has been a really interesting chat.

Kaushika Jayalath:

Thank you so much. Take care. Bye-bye.

Tasha Day:

Thank you.

Ready for more?

If you are interested in exploring other student-centred, university-business collaborations, head now to our episode Developing future-ready talent with TU Dublin and Digital Skillnet, where we explore the 13-year partnership and how their co-created programs foster talent development and workforce readiness.

Get to know more cases in depth with our Case study collection: Fostering talent through education partnerships. From TU Dublin’s Enterprise Academy to Jönköping University’s partnership with Husqvarna, ASELSAN Academy to KVIST project, these stories illustrate the power of collaboration in driving innovation and shaping the future.

Stay tuned for the next episode on this series and don’t forget to follow us on your preferred podcast platform!