Message from Jack J. Blanchard, Associate Provost for Enterprise Resource Planning:
If you’ve seen the announcement from our Executive Sponsors, you know that leadership and the Elevate Program team have made the decision to delay Workday Go Live. At the end of March, the program completed our most recent Go/No Go Assessment, a rigorous and transparent assessment that evaluated critical milestones, technical metrics, and campus readiness. The outcome of this most recent assessment was the decision that the program needed more time beyond July to ensure the ultimate success.
The main concerns which prompted the Elevate Program to delay Go Live included:
- Technical requirements for payroll: Payroll is complex due to a variety of roles/positions, pay adjustments and pay distribution by the State Central Payroll Bureau (CPB). The majority of ongoing payroll testing has been successful, but we require additional time to thoroughly complete and validate testing. Additional testing requirements also emerged over spring break, which added to timing concerns.
- Functional readiness: The assessment revealed challenges related to staffing in some units/divisions (e.g., open positions). This created burdens on staff to prepare for a July transition.
I want to take this moment to acknowledge that our program has achieved some incredible milestones to prepare for Workday. Our training team recently completed all training and support material that will be used to prepare staff, faculty, and students to use Workday. We’ve also granted 1,000 staff members across our campuses access to a fully operational Workday readiness tenant. This early access will allow these key stakeholders to begin gaining experience with Workday and to provide feedback to the team.
The delay in our Workday Go-Live will provide several benefits:
- Allow completion of rigorous testing protocols.
- Provide more time for staff to learn the Workday system including new business processes.
- Give more time for central offices and units to make sure they are staffed appropriately.
- Result in smoother and less stressful transition to Workday for staff, faculty and students.
A new Go Live date is currently being carefully determined with stakeholder feedback. We fully expect Workday Go Live to occur in the upcoming academic year (Fall or Spring semester of AY23-24). Notably, the new date will not be before mid-October. We will inform campus of the new Go-Live date in May.
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Featured FAQs
When will Training start?
For training to be most effective, it should occur closer to the system “Go-Live.” As a result, formal training will also be delayed and the start of training will be determined by the new Go-Live date. We expect that the delay will allow for more training time during the summer.
Aside from formal training, staff can continue to work towards preparing for the Workday transition by reviewing functional overviews provided on the Elevate website. Staff can also prepare by working with their unit on other readiness tasks as advised by your local Project Implementation Team (consult with your PIT crew lead).
Key staff across colleges, divisions and campuses along with PIT crew members (over 1,000 staff) currently have early access to a Workday tenant to gain familiarity with the new Workday system. The delay will allow additional time for these staff to explore the system, provide feedback, and understand impacts on operations.
What will be the new Workday Go Live date?
This is being determined with stakeholder input. It is essential that in determining the new date that the Elevate program takes into consideration various requirements from across our campus and partners.
We expect to announce the new date in May. The new Go-Live date will be no sooner than mid-October 2023.
Words of Workday
- USource: A worktag that represents former KFS Accounts that are not Grants, Projects, or Gifts. This includes, but are not limited to, State, DRIF, Agencies, and Auxiliaries accounts, USource will be a "Driver" worktag and will have related worktags of Fund, Cost Center, Balancing Unit, Higher Ed Function Code.
- Tenant: A Tenant is a Workday environment or instance. The program will have several tenants during the implementation that will be used for different purposes, based on a combination of the phase of the project and the workstream (HCM, Finance, Technical, etc.). An example of a tenant is the Workday readiness tenant, used for early access for select staff to Workday.
- Ledger Account: (Legacy Term: Object Code) Assets, Liabilities, Fund Balance, Revenue, and Expense accounts. Revenue and Spend Categories post to ledger accounts based on account posting rules. Ledger Accounts provide the level of detail needed for core financial statements.
ElevateR Spotlight
The Elevate Program is thrilled to have a team of 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.
Warren Bryan
Cutover Lead
Warren joined the University of Maryland in 2018, when him and his wife moved to Maryland for her to pursue her doctorate degree at UMD. Before joining Elevate, Warren worked in various roles in Enrollment Management. During his time with Enrollment Management’s Office of Assessment and Technology, Warren was the project manager for the implementation of a scholarship tool that was designed to make it easier to identify potential recipients for UMD's scholarships. “A lot of my experience has been on the student side, so for example, when I worked in the Office of the Registrar, I had to register students manually one by one for classes,” says Warren, about his experience at the Univeristy. “When I think ahead to Workday Student, that is a clear example of where Workday will make the work we do much more streamlined and efficient, and save someone at UMD lots of time.”
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