Message from Jack J. Blanchard, Associate Provost for Enterprise Resource Planning:
Reflecting on 2022
As 2022 comes to an end, I want to take the time to reflect on Elevate’s growth and accomplishments over the past year. In 2022, the Elevate Program has:
- Completed our Customer Confirmation Sessions in early February. These sessions provided 468 staff members from our Project Implementation Teams (PIT Crews) and Advisory Groups with an opportunity to share feedback that helped identify gaps and inform the future state design of Workday. These critical subject matter experts spent 4,626 cumulative hours dedicated to these sessions and provided the Elevate team with 2,138 pieces of feedback.
- Engaged PIT Crews in monthly meetings and assisted PITs with critical readiness assignments including security role mapping, cleaning up data in PHR, and ensuring their units are informed and preparing for Go Live.
- Collaborated with IT specialists across our partner institutions to review all systems and to collect and document all impacted systems into an Impacted Systems Inventory.
- Completed two rounds of End To End Testing, validating the configuration and business processes. Additional testing on integrations, reports, security and other items as necessary continues beginning in January 2023.
- Conducted meetings with Deans and unit leadership to review business impacts to expect in 2023 and ensure that units are fully prepared for the transition to Workday.
- Completed our second readiness survey, with 83% of respondents agreeing with the statement that they were aware of the Elevate Program and the Workday implementation.
- Remained on-track in our implementation timeline by successfully completing Configure and Prototype and beginning Test and Train.
- Hosted two Town Halls, featuring both live and recorded remarks from Provost Jennifer King Rice. These virtual sessions, hosted by myself, provided staff, faculty and students across our four partner institutions with insight into the progress of our Workday implementation, and what to expect as we get closer to Go Live. Over 1,300 campus participants attended these Town Halls.
- Held ten Functional Overview sessions, featuring knowledgeable members of our Functional teams. Over 4,000 participants have attended the live Functional Overview sessions with another 5,400 viewing the online videos of these sessions.
- Began the foundational planning for Workday Student. The Elevate Program hired a Student system lead, and readiness activities for the Student implementation will begin in January 2023.
- Began building a permanent Workday Support Organization, housed under the Division of IT. In addition to maintaining the Workday system, this team will provide training and communicate changes while partnering with UHR, Finance, Academic Affairs, Procurement, and other support groups.
Next year will be monumental for the Elevate Program: Workday will Go Live! I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your support and engagement with Elevate. As a subscriber of our newsletter, you are taking the initiative to prepare for this significant change. We appreciate your participation and encourage you to stay engaged with us in 2023.
Explore Workday Benefits and Features
In 2022, the Elevate Program team provided key insights and sneak peeks into Workday during 10 live, virtual Functional Overview sessions. We were pleased to share the upcoming changes and benefits that Workday will bring to the day-to-day work of a research university, including recruiting, onboarding, purchasing, reporting, and more.
We have no Functional Overview scheduled for this month, but we invite you to revisit some of our previous sessions by watching the recordings on the Elevate website.
Featured FAQs
Can I see a list of systems that will be replaced by Workday?
Yes. We have published a list of sunsetting systems on our website.
Is Workday replacing BA4?
No, Workday is not replacing BA4. BA4 will pull the accounting data from Workday, much like it does now with KFS.
Words of Workday
- Completion Step: The step in a business process that indicates that the process is active and the transaction has gone through. When the completion step is finished, Workday lists the business process as complete.
- Functional Area: A collection of domain or business process security policies that are related to the same set of product features (e.g. Benefits or Compensation).
- Initiation Step: The first step of a business process
- Task: A step, either standalone or in business process, that you must complete. Tasks that are part of business processes will route to be completed in a Worker's inbox.
ElevateR Spotlight
The Elevate Program is thrilled to have a team of 50 full-time employees that have a wide breadth of experience and institutional knowledge. In each issue of the ElevateR, we will shine the spotlight on a staff member who is working hard to make our project a success.
Marla Bonner, Academics Lead
Marla Bonner has been at the University of Maryland for 33 years. Her University of Maryland roots run deep. She, along with all four of her children, attended the University of Maryland for their undergraduate degrees. In her employment with the University, she has held positions in Facilities Management, the Division of IT, and the Provost’s Finance and Personnel Office. Marla was the Assistant Project Director for the Payroll Human Resource (PHR) from 1998 through 2001. Now, she is working on transitioning the University’s academic infrastructure to Workday. Marla appreciates working with her Elevate team members, who bring their varied experiences to the project. “It’s exciting that going live with the finished product is right around the corner” in July 2023, Marla says.
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