January 13th, 2022
In less than 18 months, UW Finance Transformation (UWFT) will go live and begin to transform our fragmented and out-of-date finance policies, processes and systems. This work is vital so that we can advance our University’s public mission of education, discovery, community service and patient care.
This new infrastructure, set to launch in July 2023, will enable us to make real-time, well-informed and transparent financial decisions across the institution so we can make the most efficient use of the University and state resources entrusted to us. As I’ve said before, we’re headed for a better place, and it is absolutely essential.
The Configure & Prototype (C&P) stage is set to end in March, and to get to this point we engaged stakeholders on business process design and system remediation. In addition, we launched and hosted virtual information and education events, including the first UWFT Roadshow, two Workday Core Concepts and a UW Technical Conference. For additional accomplishments, you can review the UWFT 2021 Annual Report.
For most of 2022, we’ll be in the Test stage, the fourth stage of our Implementation Phase. Having spent months configuring end-to-end business processes, among other things, we’ll transition in April to the work of testing scenarios in the Workday® Financials system. As many of you know, Workday works with other existing interfacing systems and new systems that will be integrating with UWFT.
All along, people have been the engines behind our success. Thank you to all the teams, units and stakeholders involved in this complex program, and to the UWFT professionals working at a high-level of excellence as they move through the program’s stages. I look forward to our ongoing progress in 2022.
What’s next in 2022: a look at the Test stage
The timeline below shows how this new stage fits into the UWFT program:
This fourth stage of the Implementation Phase spans 12 months, concluding in April 2023. Some of the targeted deliverables and goals include:
- End-to-end (E2E) testing cycles, which includes coordinating with UWFT partners to confirm inbound/outbound integrations and system remediations are successful
- User acceptance testing (UAT), which includes power users and process transformation team (PTT) members conducting a subset of E2E test scenarios to confirm functionality
- Payroll regression to confirm the new finance configuration doesn’t cause inaccurate payroll calculations
- Adaptive 1.0 end-user training delivery, which can take the form of online, Power User training/coaching, instructor-led or job aids/documentation
- Workday role-to-job mapping (security mapping)
- Workday classroom training tenant
- Train-the-trainer (Shared Environment & Workday Finance) sessions
- Change readiness assessments (Measurements 2 & 3), which identify cultural opportunities and points of resistance to change and assess the ability of various stakeholder groups to adapt to changes being made
If you have any questions or comments about this work, please send a note to uwftask@uw.edu.
ICYMI: Read the UWFT 2021 Annual Report infographic
ICYMI: Read a recap of 2021
ICYMI: Read the latest newsletter (UW login req’d)