March 6, 2024
Last year, the University of Washington transitioned to Workday as its new Finance platform and, as with any major change of this kind, it brought its share of short-term inefficiencies and pain points. Some of the most impactful inefficiencies have been realized in the grant administration space, with long delays in award setup and modification timelines, and backlogs in other routine work such as award invoicing, reporting, subawards, and administrative closeout.
The impact these processing delays have on the research community cannot be understated, and Sponsored Programs Finance (SPF) is committed to addressing these challenges head-on.
SPF is addressing these challenges with a three-pronged strategy aimed at streamlining processes and ultimately eliminating workflow backlogs in its units.
Steps to mitigate delays are outlined below:
Strategy
1. Comprehensive Assessment with Huron Consulting Group
To ensure a thorough and well-rounded evaluation, SPF is partnering with key stakeholders in a cross-functional collaboration aimed at mitigating administrative inefficiencies contributing to the long delays in award administration. This includes input from the UW Controller’s Office, UW Medicine Finance, UW Information Technology (UWIT), the Office of Research, and all areas within Finance Planning and Budgeting (FPB) that intersect with grants. By involving these diverse perspectives, the aim is to address not only the immediate challenges, but also to lay the foundation for a robust and sustainable grants configuration. Huron Consulting Group, as our strategic partner, will lead this collaborative effort, bringing together expertise from different domains for a holistic assessment of the UW's grants configuration, covering all elements of the Foundation Data Model (FDM) and relevant business processes. We recognize the requirement for quick action and are structuring this process to produce quick wins for our community.
2. Strategic Surge Hiring Initiative
Recognizing the urgency of the situation, SPF hired several fixed duration employees over the last quarter, all of whom are dedicated to reducing workflow backlogs. These skilled professionals are actively working toward expediting processes and enhancing operational efficiency. We recognize the challenges facing our community are immediate, impactful and must be addressed as rapidly as possible by surging resources to areas of acute need.
3. Collaboration with the Office of Research (OR)
SPF and the Office of Research (OR) maintain a strong and proactive partnership, with continuous dialogue focused on enhancements to our pre-award system of record SAGE aimed at facilitating a streamlined handoff to post-award partners in Grant and Contract Accounting (GCA). This collaborative effort aims to minimize manual workload, facilitate two-way processing and communication, and ultimately expedite processing times. For example, a recent enhancement to SAGE integrated data entered by PIs and Grant Managers into SAGE Budget directly with Workday award plans - a process which had been manual, duplicative, and taxing on GCA resources.
Tracking Progress
To keep the UW research community informed, a webpage to track workflow backlog status has been established and is updated weekly. This transparency ensures that our colleagues are able to track progress in addressing backlogs. We will continue to improve this content over time.
Our Commitment
FPB acknowledges and understands the risks these delays pose to the research community, including important partnerships with sponsors, subrecipients and other collaborators. We are determined to make efficient progress in remediating these challenges and improving our ability to effectively serve our community.
Leadership at all levels of the organization are aligned in a commitment to resolve these issues and advance best practices in research administration. Sponsored Programs Finance’s mission is to enable amazing science by reducing PI administrative burden, and while the current landscape is not where we want or need it to be, the strategies above are in direct support of supporting that mission.
For more detailed insights, please visit our Workflow and Backlog Tracking Page.