Purdue University Brought 300 Spaces into One System with Accruent EMS

The Company  

Purdue University is one of the nation’s leading research institutions, serving a rapidly growing student body across its West Lafayette campus. With 50,000 students and approximately 300 nonacademic spaces, Purdue manages one of the most complex facility scheduling environments in higher education.

The Challenge

Before implementing a unified scheduling solution, Purdue faced a fragmented approach to managing non-academic space reservations. Different departments operated on separate systems, creating inefficiencies that rippled across campus operations

“There was no customer interface for them to request. Everything came through phone calls, emails, things like that. And so that was very clunky.” – Kathy Walters, Manager of Scheduling and Systems 

The university needed a single platform that could consolidate operations, improve the customer experience, and meet strict compliance needs.

The Solution

In January 2020, Purdue selected EMS as its enterprise scheduling platform, largely due to one critical requirement: PCI compliance. EMS was the only software that met Purdue’s operational and compliance needs.

"PCI compliance was a big factor. Most of the other software we looked at did not work with what we had in place and did not have a high enough level of compliance for the things we needed to do. So it was actually the only one that met all the requirements, which we're very happy about."  - Kathy Walters, Manager of Scheduling and Systems  

The implementation included two days of onsite support followed by six weeks of remote meetings. The timing aligned with COVID-19 disruptions, allowing Purdue to focus on process improvements rather than inputting large volumes of events.

The Results

The impact of EMS on Purdue's operations became immediately apparent. The university successfully consolidated scheduling across all nonacademic spaces, supporting multiple departments and approximately 300 spaces with a single system. More importantly, the solution transformed how staff and customers interact with the reservation process.  

“We've streamlined a lot of our processes… we're able to implement rules into the system that made it easier.” – Kathy Walters, Manager of Scheduling and Systems 

The system also introduced customer-facing visibility, improved reporting accuracy, and reduced administrative workload through automated confirmations and rule-based reservations.

Looking to Streamline Your Campus Operations?

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