Post Archive
Workday Taking Shape: Customer Confirmation Sessions Completed
April 2, 2024
During spring break, the Workday Project Team embarked on a collaborative journey with the Customer Confirmation Sessions (CCS) for Workday. Teaming up with Workday consultants, we combined efforts with our Human Resources and Finance and Administration teams.
The CCS is an immersive experience into the inner workings of Workday. It offered us a detailed walkthrough of our coming new business processes led by the subject matter experts from DePauw, providing a platform for the broader Workday team to envision improvements, familiarize themselves with the user interface, and make decisions that will aid the final configuration of Workday.
Why is the CSS a big deal? CCS helped us uncover untapped gems — functionalities that might have flown under the radar but will be total game-changers for our workflows. It's all about empowering DePauw, including the daily users, the subject matter experts, and everyone, by using best practices that work in higher education.
Kudos to the presenters…
Project Team Highlight - Karen Phillips
March 21, 2024
Karen Phillips is a core team member of the Workday project. As the Director of the Business Office, Karen has been instrumental in the implementation, testing, and dialogue surrounding financial business processes. Here is a little about Karen:
I have been with DePauw for over 25 years. With the implementation of Workday, I am thrilled to consolidate the data silos on campus, streamlining departmental tasks. It's a challenging endeavor, but the end result will be well worth it.
I am dedicated to speed walking and hiking when not engaged in university-related initiatives. I have undertaken challenging international hikes, including a 12-day, 200-mile journey across England's coast-to-coast path during a surprise heat wave with temperatures 90 degrees and above during a typical 50-degree time. Additionally, I completed a 100-mile hike along the West Highland Way in Scotland over the course of eight days through consistent downpouring rain every day except the first day. These experiences…
Preparations Begin for Workday “Student”
March 18, 2024
While the Workday Student Implementation won’t officially start until September, we have already begun preparing. Members of the Workday Project Team and Academic Affairs attended two sessions with Workday Student leaders in the last week. We got a more focused picture of the timeline, had many of our questions answered, and now have previews of the types of decisions we will be making.
University Registrar Scott Spiegelberg and CIO Carol Smith have been speaking with various groups of staff and faculty on campus to get a good picture of how e-services is currently being used, and how those experiences can be improved with Workday. Through these conversations with Athletics, CARE, the Learning Commons, Alumni Engagement, Enrollment Management, Financial Aid, Academic Deans, and others, we have been making an ever-growing wishlist of features to implement. These conversations will continue throughout the implementation process.
The First Round of Workday Testing In in Full Swing
March 12, 2024
The Workday Platform Implementation is progressing well. The Workday Project Team is currently in the Unit Testing stage, where data is loaded into a version of Workday for system testing.
Unit Testing involves working through workflow scenarios specific to each area of Finance, Human Resources, and Payroll and fine-tuning each process to run most smoothly and efficiently. The nearly 800 scenarios that teams are reviewing demonstrates the extensive nature of this undertaking. The progress made thus far, though, continues to go well.
The Workday Platform, encompassing Finance, HR, and Payroll functions, is scheduled to launch in October. Following this, the implementation of Workday Student will begin.
Project Update: Winter Term with Workday
February 6, 2024
Phase 1 of the Workday Implementation is well underway, focused on Workday Platform, which includes DePauw’s business, finance, human resources, and payroll functions.
During the weeks since project launch in October, the Workday Project Team participated in planning with Workday consultants, engaged in training to learn how Workday works, and completed workbooks detailing DePauw’s current data structures and workflows in our systems that ultimately will replaced by Workday Platform, including e-Services and ADP.
The team spent their January Winter Term conducting Workday foundation alignment sessions (“FAS”) with Workday consultants.