November 2018 has been chosen as the HCM/Payroll Workday go-live window for campus–just over a year until the switch to this modern, cloud-based solution selected by the university for human capital management and payroll (HCM/Payroll). Dana Cook, associate vice president of Administrative Systems Modernization, announced the date to campus stakeholders at the Workday Open House and Town Hall on October 17. If you were not able to attend, you can watch a video of the presentation. EID and password required. Workday for HCM/Payroll is expected to go live on or around Nov. 1, 2018.
Road to Go-Live Date
The Workday Implementation Program gathered feedback from the Council of University Business Officers (CUBO), business processing unit leadership, academic and research deans, administrative IT leaders, and other stakeholders to help build a recommendation for one of three proposed dates: 9/1/2018, 10/1/2018, or 11/1/2018. Feedback gathered included information on peak work times and mitigation strategies to minimize disruption to university business. November is generally considered a slower time for the colleges, schools, units and central processing offices. The program consulted our Executive Sponsors in advance of making a recommendation to the Workday Steering Committee, which unanimously approved the recommendation for Nov. 2018.
Work Milestones and Timeline
To ensure campus is prepared to confidently use Workday, and the technology works as it should, the Workday implementation team is partnering with central business process owners and other stakeholders on key activities. Those activities include:
- Testing: During testing, Workday system functionality is evaluated to verify that business processes operate as expected. The system is tested by a subset of campus users for ease of use and will be inundated with data to ensure it can handle the anticipated traffic at go live. The testing phase began in October 2017 and will continue through August 2018. Testing stages include unit testing, end to end testing, payroll parallel testing, and end user testing. A subset of campus users will be involved in end to end and end user testing.
- Training: Training courses and resources are being developed so users are prepared to confidently work in the new system. Training will encompass a mix of instructor-led, in-classroom trainings and labs and digital, on-demand learning. By providing materials in a variety of modes, the Workday program can accommodate workers with different learning needs and different job roles. Quick reference guides and Workday Briefs will be available starting this fall. Training for end users will begin two months prior to go-live and will continue after go live.
- Cut-over: The cut-over phase includes activities to switch HCM/Payroll business operations from the legacy system to Workday, including migrating data to Workday. During this time, legacy systems like HRMS will be frozen, data will be converted and loaded into Workday, and additional testing will take place. When the system is ready, it will be opened in stages starting first with the central processing offices for additional testing before being opened for general campus use when Workday will become the system of record.
Why Only HCM/Payroll?
On August 29, President Greg Fenves announced in a communication to campus that the Administrative Systems Modernization Program would transition to focus solely on Workday HCM/Payroll, and that the Workday Financials project would be delayed pending a business process re-engineering effort.
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