Alchemy.us’ Post

Workday for Higher Education "End state" is different from "go-live" Go-live: Your day-to-day functions, plus maybe some extras, are functioning and meeting your operational needs. End state: The prized confluence of your goal usage configuration of Student, empowering you to transform and leapfrog your institution. Your implementation is all about go-live, but work done afterwards is what pushes you to reach end state.

Great chance to learn from one of our best partners and amazing customers! Topics include: -Cultivating Momentum: Balancing Stabilization and Progress -Building the "A" Team: Assembling Your Dream Team -Academic Integration: Aligning your implementation with your Academic Calendar -Springing into Action: Setting the Production Rollout Agenda

Be sure to learn about Workday Student at Wellesley College entering its 5th year live on #WorkdayStudent. Ganesan Ravishanker takes a quick look back, here are a few highlights in Part 1. - No SIS will provide everything, so your Student system needs to play well with others via integrations and interoperability - Workday Extend allows Wellesley to create custom applications within Workday - Workday Student Registration and Saved Schedules - success. - Data strategy supported by Workday Prism #teamwd #workdayforhighereducation

This is a super interesting discussion and one I’d not considered thoroughly before. There are many angles and lenses, but here are a few that come to mind: -Workday really does blur the lines of “techno” and “functional” by making a lot of configuration accessible to non-coders. There’s architecture and design to learn, but no coding required to configure native functionality. It’s a relatively low barrier to entry for those who are functional, but technically inclined. -Many knowledge workforce demographics (often generational) still consider themselves non-technical with no interest in becoming technical. This perpetuates the bifurcation of roles. -Those in non-technical roles that make the shift to learning how to configure Workday (due to the low barrier to entry) may not learn best practices for software development in conjunction. Thorough testing using various methods and documentation of scenarios and outcomes is often overlooked. -Workday staff team size is a big consideration here. Small teams tend to have the, “We’ll just figure it out and make the change in Production” (usually owned by HR) mindset vs large teams with separated powers (usually owned by IT).

Words matter. Too often in Workday Student conversations I hear miscommunication over terms. I'm constantly asking questions like, "When you said "historical" did you mean a student no longer attending the institution or an actual historical academic record in the Workday Student technical definition which is a student converted as a static text file?" I recommend schools use the Workday Student technical definitions. Here are words I frequently hear miscommunication about: Active/Inactive Cohort Historical Student/Academic Record Conferral Date/Completion Effective Date Go-Live Student Status Any others you would add to the list? If you're a school getting started or are implementing Workday Student already but are not sure about the Workday technical definitions of these terms, let me know and I can provide them to you. #workdaystudent

Excited to share a glimpse into the transformative power of Workday Adaptive Planning in higher education with Workforce Planning! 🎓✨ As organizations navigate the dynamic landscape of higher education, strategic workforce planning becomes paramount. With Workday Adaptive Planning, institutions can effectively manage their workforce, optimize resources, and drive performance to new heights. In my recent project, I delved into the intricacies of workforce planning, particularly in the realm of position management tailored for higher education institutions. Here's a snapshot of what we achieved: 👥 Headcount Management: Through comprehensive analytics and real-time data, we gained insights into headcount trends across departments, enabling proactive decision-making. 💼 Position Control: Workday Adaptive Planning empowered us to meticulously oversee positions for faculty and staff separately, ensuring alignment with organizational objectives while maintaining budgetary discipline. This included FTE/Headcount reconciliation and scenario analysis, hiring and terminations, and vacancy analysis and forecasting. 💰 Compensation Analysis: We utilized Workday's advanced analytics to conduct thorough compensation forecasting and analysis, ensuring equitable and competitive remuneration structures across the institution. By harnessing the power of Workday Adaptive Planning, institutions can unlock a new era of workforce agility and strategic alignment, propelling them towards a mission of academic excellence. Curious to learn more about how Workday Adaptive Planning can revolutionize workforce planning in higher education? Let's connect and explore opportunities for innovation together! #HigherEd #WorkforcePlanning #Innovation #HigherEducationTechnology #WorkdayAdaptivePlanning #StrategicPlanning #Innovation #EducationTransformation #Alight #FinancialPlanning #Budget

How do you determine a "best practice" when you're implementing Workday Student? I often work closely with Registrar Offices which are bound to the academic policies of the institution. These policies are extremely hard to change based on my 20 years of experience in higher education. I would make a case that these policies should be revisited. But by time a Workday Student project kicks off (especially if it's only 18-24 months), it will be difficult to get these through the necessary committees unless you've created a fast track approval process and have gotten buy-in to make substantial academic changes quickly. Ideally a school would review all their academic policies 2-3 years prior to an implementation kickoff. This is the time to simplify, focus on desired outcomes, and come up with "best practices". You can be vendor agnostic, but if you're committed to Workday Student it would be good to find out what is and is not possible. Otherwise, you'll be spending a lot of time and money on workarounds and maintenance of those workarounds. If you do have to come up with workarounds, a shoutout to Jeniffer Champaneri who I observed recently helped a school be able to fulfill an academic policy through a creative report in Workday Student. Reports and cohorts seem to be the solution so many times to find a way to make something work to meet requirements. #workdaystudent

I highly recommend when implementing any aspect of Workday Student that you have an institution project plan and you don't rely solely on the one from the implementation partner. Here's why: 1) The implementation partner project plan doesn't have all the tasks the institution needs to do. There's a lot of moving parts at your institution and a lot to be done that's outside of Workday during an implementation. You don't want to lose track of these. 2) These project plans are usually over 500 lines long. The tasks focus on what the implementation partner needs to do or list broad things to monitor/complete. 3) The Workday Student methodology follows a waterfall project plan approach (Plan, Architect & Configure, Test, Deploy) and the project plans try to categorize everything into one of these stages. However, with multiple moves to production and multiple uptakes of functionality, that's not how they work. There is a different schedule for what is part of Move to Production 1 than for Move to Production 2. Additionally, testing starts during the Architect and Configure stage. It's not laid out well in the project plan to communicate this. 4) Because Workday Student projects are so complicated (more like 10 projects happening simultaneously that need coordination), the project plans mention broad items that you have to track elsewhere (e.g. tenant builds). It's hard to track dates in two places, so then the project plan often is out of sync. I'll talk more in future posts of how you want to organize your own internal project plan during a Workday Student implementation. #WorkdayStudent #BeyondAcademics

Going to #Alliance24? Make sure you check out how much impact Workday can have on your higher education institution!! #HIED #highereducation #workday #TeamWDAY #TeamWDAY