Happy New Year!
Welcome to 2016! I hope your December was a good one, and that you were able to rest and recharge. Just before the winter break, the team hosted the Workday Finance Kickoff where project sponsors, IT leadership, Workday Finance Advisory Councils, project team members, and our partners from Deloitte celebrated the launch of the Workday Finance project.
The project team created posters describing Workday functionality within the Finance scope and stood by to answer attendees' questions. Attendees were able to vote on their favorite poster(s) and the winning teams were treated to lunch. Congratulations to the Integrations / Conversions, P2P, and Grants teams!
2016 will be a busy year for the project. Design will be finalized for business processes and integrations and data conversions will be prepared and tested for the preliminary P1 tenant. These are some of the many steps that lead to final testing and deployment.
January through mid-February we will be working closely with Council members and key stakeholders on first iterations of business process designs as well as the design of the Financial Data Model. The integration list has been finalized and the list of data conversions is being confirmed. March will signify the end of the Architecture phase and the beginning of the Configuration phase.
If you would like to see the work in action, or simply say hello, stop by Suite 300 in Gables One Tower - the posters are up on the walls! Here's to a great year!
- Theresa Ashman
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Building the Best
Together, stakeholders from the entire University are laying the groundwork for a financial system that reflects the University's commitment to innovation.
The project's Executive Sponsors (Steve Cawley, Gabe Ezstherhas, and Nerissa Morris) have been hard at work behind the scenes providing guidance and support. Their feedback is helping us to build a system that:
- Ensures accountability and empowerment
- Supports compliance and internal controls
- Streamlines approval flows
- Provides consistency across the University
- Removes non-value added steps in the business process
Although each business process will be different, these core concepts help in ensuring overall objectives are met.
The team is working closely with the Advisory Councils to ensure close collaboration and transparency.
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Costing Hierarchy
Workday uses a hierarchy for processing various types of costing, whether it’s an allocation or an override. Understanding this priority can help you set up costing allocations that provide the desired costing result. Likewise, it can help diagnose why costing did not happen the way it was intended. A graphic has been created to explain these concepts.
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Tip Sheets are Now Password Protected
As of January 26, Workday tip sheets and tutorials are password protected. When you click on a tip sheet or tutorial, you will be prompted to log in using your CaneID and password. You will be able to view more than one tip sheet per login, and will not have to log in again until your SSO (single sign-on) session expires or begin a new browser session.
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Entering a New Phase
As the Architect phase of the project comes to a close, the team is laying the groundwork for the Prototype 1 phase.
During the Architect phase, members from the Finance Advisory Councils, central office staff, and the project team participated in 19 Deep Dive sessions. "These sessions supported an environment where open dialogue generated innovative solutions for the development of a more efficient and robust UM financial structure," states attendee John Alzate, Associate Director of Finance at RSMAS. Participants shared feedback on current processes, and dreamed of future possibilities in the areas of endowments, procurement, business assets, grants, and projects.
"The new WD systems are very powerful and it will take all the UM business processes into a higher level of simplicity and efficiency," says Berta Souto, Assistant Chair, Basic Sciences, Microbiology.
"This change will streamline our business processes and collaborations between departments, and provide our employees and leaders with more comprehensive information for decision making", she adds.
The Deep Dive sessions paved the road for 21 Business Process Design sessions, which began earlier this month. In these sessions, participants are reviewing over 150 business processes and determining
- who can initiate the process,
- who approves the process,
- any special circumstances.
Prototype 1 configuration will begin once all sessions have been completed. Attendees from the design sessions will review the configured business proccesses at the end of the Architect phase in late February.
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It's a New Day in Workday
Do you know the University's common purpose? How about the DIRECCT values and corresponding leadership traits?
The Executive Sponsors, Workday Project team, and Finance Advisory Board and Councils believe that by aligning the project with these concepts, they can build a system that fosters administrative excellence. This alignment will result in transforming our existing business processes to better support organizational goals and our common purpose. The Change Management team led discussions with the Advisory Councils on this topic in advance of their work in the business process design sessions. Click the button below for an excerpt from that presentation.
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There's Still Time to Attend FBPI Training
Are you a (FBPI) Finance Business Process Initiator who would like to learn more about the Workday FBPI role and practice with some hands-on activities? Register today for Workday Business Processes for FBPIs, a ninety-minute introductory course addressing costing allocations and payroll accounting adjustments. This course is for new FBPIs, those who have some experience in Workday (but need more practice), and for those who would like to know more about costing best practices. Cost Center Managers who may initiate these transactions are also welcome to attend. To register, log in to ULearn and search for upcoming sessions by using the keyword: “FBPI.”
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