WPI has used Banner for nearly three decades as a system to track employees’ human resources and finance information and student billing, grading, and admissions. After being notified that the current version would no longer be supported by Banner, WPI decided to explore other products. Workday’s product is used by many other top universities like Bentley, Cornell, and The Ohio State University because it offers the basic tools and structure universities rely on to operate smoothly, but it’s also known for being user-friendly.
Unlike the often-cumbersome Banner, Workday’s implementation will allow students, faculty, and staff to access information easily, quickly, and even from mobile devices through Workday mobile apps. “There are numerous self-service features that will help people find the information they need,” says Sia Najafi. “The more we automate it, the more it enables end users and gives accurate decision making with data makers.”
Implementing Workday
The official transition will happen in October 2018 and will involve processes related to benefits, talent management, payroll time tracking, compensation, workforce planning, recruitment, and financial management tools like accounting, budgeting, and grants management. As with any major project, the implementation of changes will be iterative and defined based on the process flow, says Daniel Amsden, director of the program management office in Enterprise Information Systems.
Daniel Amsden addresses a group training in Workday techniques.
“This has been a couple of years in the making,” says Amsden. “From the IT perspective, years ago we had raised a concern that we had to do something about Banner. We recognized there was risk in continuing to use the enterprise resources planning (ERP) structure if it was not supported and if we could not maintain it.”
With a consultant’s assistance, WPI chose Workday among several product possibilities as the best one to meet WPI’s needs and also offer the flexibility to adapt to the specific higher ed environment. “With each platform, we had to ask, ‘What do we need to accomplish?’” says Amsden. “We had to find some of the pain points.”
As Amsden says, the departments that typically had the most involvement with Banner, like human resources and finance, are likely going to be the areas that will experience the most change with Workday. As the launch date nears, all employees will have access to training sessions. As those areas had particular reliance on paper processes, they will see the greatest changes as processes become automated or exist in a mostly online environment.
For most employees, the change will be fairly gradual. For example, when looking at a pay stub, users will have a different login screen. Changes to expense reports will be introduced as well. Because the majority of users will access Workday from their mobile devices, the system is built with mobile use in mind first. “The dashboard is very simple,” says Amsden. “It’s mostly icons. But that’s the point, it should be simple. After this, we'll ask why it was ever not this simple.”
Workday’s implementation will bring about not just new processes, but also a change in the way departments like human resources and finance do the day-to-day business of running the institution. “They will have new terminology, new structures,” says Amsden. “Many of the things on paper today won’t be on paper. We are changing processes, so it’s not just changing the system, but making the decision to accept standard processes and practice.”
For Amsden and his team, aligning WPI’s practices into a uniform and effective model helps the university’s internal structure, but also helps it align with the wider global expectations for regulations and consistency. Once Enterprise Transformation is complete, WPI will have standard processes that enable more effective data-driven decision making.
The end result will mean a smoother process—less time related to tracking down forms, verifying correct information from multiple sources, or reentering data. The transformation, says Amsden, is about making people more of the focus and allowing them to concentrate on the things that make WPI so distinctive.
- By Julia Quinn-Szcesuil
