Dear W&L Community,
We’re pleased to announce that Workday is coming!
What is Workday? Workday is a rapidly growing, industry leading cloud-based provider of human capital management, financial management, business planning and student information software. The product was selected by W&L as the system to replace Ellucian Colleague (including WebAdvisor and Self-Service), our 38-year-old platform used to manage Human Resources, Finance and Student information. Workday is built using modern technologies designed to provide ease-of-use on any device and agility to adapt to an ever-changing landscape.
Why Workday? While Colleague’s use on campus has been maximized, its technical limitations make it cost prohibitive to maintain and impractical for students, faculty and staff to navigate and manage. W&L conducted an exhaustive search and evaluation of alternate systems in the marketplace. Workday surfaced as the premier solution while meeting all of W&L’s requirements to replace Ellucian Colleague. In alignment with the W&L Strategic Plan, the move to Workday was proposed and approved last year. Intuitive functionality, more reliable access to data, and marked improvement in our efficiencies were all critical components to selecting Workday as W&L’s next solution.
When does it arrive? Workday will be deployed in two phases with Phase 1 already underway as of July 1, 2019.
Phase 1: Human Resource and Finance functionality is included and expected to “Go Live” next summer, July 1, 2020.
Phase 2: Student records and registration (University Registrar’s Office) will be the focus of the effort beginning September 2020 and concluding June 2022. The Workday Student component takes nearly a year to plan and stage, with a rolling release in conjunction with the 2021-22 academic cycle.
Our project team is comprised of the groups listed above and ITS. As you can imagine, the respective offices involved in Phase 1 are heavily investing time to manage the Workday implementation effort while maintaining business as usual within existing systems. We appreciate your patience during our “construction” and we’ll strive to continue providing excellent support throughout.
What can you expect from us? Moving forward, we will provide significant access to communication and training. We will be sure to provide a variety of opportunities for faculty, staff and students to be introduced to the beneficial new Workday processes and features. As we near the holidays, you can expect more communication specific to the status of the ongoing effort, as well as a project website with updates to keep you informed. Training opportunities will be announced as we approach the “Go Live” date of July 1, 2020.
In the meantime, should you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to reach out to any of us.
Respectfully,
Deborah Caylor, Associate Treasurer
Scott Dittman, Registrar
Celia Kovac, Controller
Mary Main, Executive Director of Human Resources
David Saacke, Chief Technology Officer
Jodi Williams, Executive Director of Budgets and Compensation
Executive Sponsors:
Marc Conner, Provost and Jo and James Ballengee Professor of English
Steve McAllister, Vice President for Finance and Administration