UC Berkeley brings clarity and momentum to campus operations with Perceptive Content

UC Berkeley’s modernization journey

• Challenge: Manual, paper-based workflows resulted in information silos and inefficient processes across campus.

• Solution: Hyland Perceptive Content, paired with Hyland Enterprise Search — a data discovery and enterprise search offering — has centralized content management and seamlessly integrated with existing systems.

• Results: The university achieved significant efficiency gains, reduced onboarding processes by up to a month and created a foundation for ongoing innovation.

When information lives everywhere, progress slows

The University of California, Berkeley, consistently rated as one of the top public institutions in the U.S., has 180-plus academic departments and programs. In the past, that meant a lot of paper, along with time-intensive searches for information.

A longtime user of Perceptive Content, UC Berkeley is deploying the enterprise content management (ECM) solution to transform its campus operations.

The reliance on paper produced “boxes and boxes of pages,” Senior Business Systems Analyst Patricia Juarez said. That was especially challenging for document-heavy departments such as accounts payable (AP). Invoices, contracts and related documentation were difficult to track, access and route efficiently, increasing the risk of delays and manual rework.

As UC Berkeley began capturing and indexing its documents digitally, users required flexible ways to search for specific information. Staff needed intuitive search capabilities that could surface relevant content regardless of where it originated.

For example, students often have multiple degrees, and teams needed to instantly identify current statuses for graduates continuing their education.

“A user needs to be able to search and find everything in one place,” Juarez said.

A flexible foundation that connects campus-wide knowledge

Perceptive Content’s flexibility, combined with the efficiency of Hyland Enterprise Search, has made information easily accessible, leading to accelerated workflows and improved user and student experiences. Together, the solutions enable users to search multiple repositories through a single interface, eliminating the need to navigate multiple applications or data sources.

Equally important, Perceptive Content’s integration capabilities have given UC Berkeley’s IT team a scalable platform for campus‑wide improvement. Rather than implementing isolated fixes, the university can connect systems, scale use cases and continue building upon its ECM foundation.

Juarez regularly encourages other departments struggling with fragmented information to centralize their data. Her message resonates: connecting content and making it accessible is both achievable and impactful.

“And when they hear that, they are like, ‘Wow, are you serious?’ We are. We can do it,” Juarez said.

Momentum that compounds across the university

A decisive factor in UC Berkeley partnering with Hyland was trust. “We know that we can rely on them,” Juarez said.

That trust has played a critical role throughout a modernization initiative that has proven to be both wide‑ranging and consistently effective.

Enhanced student services

From financial aid to housing, undergraduate admissions and the Office of the Registrar, UC Berkeley has “a lot of use cases for Perceptive Content,” Juarez said. Departments across campus are leveraging the platform to improve responsiveness and better meet the needs of students throughout their academic journeys. With Hyland’s help, documents are quickly accessible and departments can effectively support a student body of more than 45,000 with diverse needs.

Improved facilities management

Perceptive Content houses a complex set of data and documents for facilities, including maps of buildings, floor plans and electrical maps. UC Berkeley has developed search qualifications that can quickly scan intricate sets of information and generate accurate results.

Efficient AP and HR processes

By integrating DocuSign with Perceptive Content, UC Berkeley has reduced the employee onboarding process from a month to “a matter of days or hours,” Juarez said. The new-hire process is the first in a series of improvements — one that also includes performance evaluations — to how the HR department engages with its employees. Together, these changes support more efficient, consistent and timely HR interactions across the employee life cycle.

Perceptive Content also helps the university manage AP invoices, contracts, grants and reimbursement requests.

Positive word of mouth

As the use cases mount and more departments see encouraging results, the IT team expands its reach.

“We’re really all over the place, and campus departments continue reaching out to us and ask, ‘Can I work with you? Can you help me?’” Juarez said.

Building a platform for what’s next

Ongoing process improvements are encouraging teams to think more holistically about how information flows across the university. Rather than focusing on isolated workflows, departments are identifying opportunities for broader integration and long‑term impact.

UC Berkeley is exploring larger system integrations and evaluating how emerging AI technologies could further enhance operations. By building on its existing content foundation, the university is positioned to adapt to future advancements while maintaining consistency and control.

“We think something isn’t going to work, but we explore it and see what happens,” Juarez said. “That’s when we’ve come up with really great solutions.