I just got back from a couple of days in Baton Rouge, LA, attending a meeting regarding Workday Student. I will be honest and say that I did not like the location, the food and the weather (it was rainy and cloudy and in the 50’s)! Since we were constantly reminded of Safe Harbor statements, I would rather not delve into the details of what we saw and heard. But, in general terms, the student module of Workday is shaping up nicely. Some areas of it are really well developed and well thought of, but the others are “in the works”. I was pretty impressed with the progress that has been made, so I am feeling confident that we will have some of the crucial things ready for us when we plan our implementation next Fall.

During these meetings you find out a great deal. I attended a presentation on transfer articulation, close to my heart, because I wrote what we currently use at Wellesley. I feel that our process for granting transfer credits is pretty convoluted and complicated. But, after listening to the complexities of transfer articulation from some of the community colleges and state universities, I was thanking how relatively simple ours is. And even more impressive was that the presenters from Workday understood all of this and have been accommodating their needs. Since it is all configurable, we are covered! I can see how ours can be vastly simplified in Workday.

But the most exciting news is that we plan to go live with Workday HCM (Human Capital Management), as planned, in the first week of January. A journey that is worth a TV documentary and a couple of books, we completed it! I keep saying that this was one of the shiniest moment for the College, where collaboration was at its peak. Our Human Resources, Finance, the Provost’s Office, Student Financial Services and of course staff from LTS came together and ironed out differences and got it done.

Needless to say, ERP implementations are complex. Frankly, technology is the easiest part of any such implementations. It is the rest that has a lot to do with the team dynamics and the community’s appetite for change that makes it extremely difficult. But, we managed all of it well and we are in the final stages of reviewing our “tenant”, as Workday calls it. Not sure why the hosted system is called a tenant, because, it is Wellesley College who is the tenant and the instance we plan to use in the cloud is the house we are leasing! I need to talk to Workday about this 🙂

You get the paradigm by now. Workday in the cloud is like a multistory complex and each of us is a tenant and we each get few apartments (sandbox to test and play, like the attached apartment for the children where messing around is allowed; and the production one which is like our well kept apartment where we live – ok, well kept is relative, but you get it). These are furnished apartments and as a landowner, Workday has pretty strict rules about not cluttering the apartment. But they actually allow you to “configure” your apartments, the appliances and furnishings to suit your needs. Whereas you can choose not to use some of the furnishings and appliances, you can’t remove an appliance or furniture and bring a new one in (they have these doormen watching you!). The furnitures and appliances are pretty versatile to offer the range of flexibilities to make one’s life comfortable and twice a year they do make some serious changes to these! Of course, they don’t ask you permission to make these changes, so it is a different world.

We have already begun designing (rearranging furniture and appliances) the core finance module for our use. It is coming along nicely. We have learned a lot from the HCM implementation, so finance is going much more smoothly. In addition, though there are unique things about how we do business, because of accounting rules and compliance, we stick to many of the accounting and financial rules that govern that domain, so it is relatively easier.

The HCM implementation was an eye opener for almost everyone who was involved. We all got to know how many different types of employee types we have, even for such a small institution. For example, there are 9, 10, 11 month employees in addition to the 12 month ones. For some, the payment coincided with the months they worked, but for others, it was spread out over 12 months. And one of these days I will write about a group for whom the way we track time and pay is so complicated that I want to find out who came up with such a method. Haven’t found the answer yet!

Because of confusion over exactly how Workday does its calculation of total compensation for those who are in the special categories, we found out in the last minute that in one place the total comp was not shown accurately. Thanks to some real smart work by someone from our implementation partner, we got past that a couple of weeks ago, talk about last minute fixes!!!

Benefits eligibility – pretty complex and historical. I won’t even go into the details of this, but we all know how grandfathering in this realm is so common and benefits eligibilities do change over time. But the reason why I bring it up here is that, thanks to this implementation, there are many who understand these now rather than a handful and because in Workday these are configurations that are “relatively” easy to understand and interpret (note the word relatively), we collectively feel better. And in my opinion, more people knowing any business process reduces institutional risk.

As I said, the last 9 months were worthy of a documentary, so there is so much to it that I can write about. But I need to stop and get ready to help our consultants see how we manage committee assignments for the Provost’s office. Frankly, it is a great piece of work that we produced and it works really well. But, we all can’t wait to get out of it and move it to Workday, for a variety of reasons.