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University of Washington
UW Finance Transformation

October News

UWFT Monthly Program News Update

This message was sent to UW leadership, administrators and finance role-holders. Others who received this email are those whose work will be impacted by UWFT, or who have expressed an interest in staying aware of program news. This message may be shared broadly.

What is UW Finance Transformation?

The UW Finance Transformation program’s multi-year mission is to transform the University’s aging legacy financial systems, policies, and processes and deliver a current, cloud-based system that will improve how the UW tracks, spends, collects, manages, and reports financial information. This transformation is a necessary step in ensuring strong financial management and responsible stewardship of the University’s finances.

What is the status of the project?

The Program is in the “Readiness Phase” – a phase that relies on broad input to inform and define the larger scope and schedule for this transformation. Specifically, the UWFT team is collaborating with units to identify the organizational structure and build the roadmap and vision for the full transformation effort. A Program overview detailing recent milestones was highlighted in an article published last week in UW-IT Insights.    

Accomplishment: Benchmarking & Data Gathering

UWFT asked every single unit in the University to self-report on how you manage finances. After all, how can UWFT hope to introduce efficiencies and standardization if we don’t know exactly how the various units are doing their work today? Thanks to the 100 percent, on time participation of all 176 units, we were able to gather critical data on current systems, integrations, reports, and process maps.

  • QUICK FINDINGS: THERE IS A LOT OF OPPORTUNITY FOR IMPROVEMENT
    • There are nearly 750 side systems currently in use
    • In total, we rely on roughly 1,000 integrations between internal and external systems
    • There are several processes where the UW is unnecessarily spending a significant amount of time managing transactions

Simply implementing Workday doesn’t solve the inefficiencies the UW is experiencing. Rather, this implementation provides the catalyst for a total transformation of UW policies, business practices and processes needed to encourage more responsible stewardship of our finances. The findings from the recent Benchmarking & Data Gathering effort are providing the UWFT team with the ability to make data-driven decisions that will help define and inform the UWFT Foundation Data Model, Change Management strategy, and the full Readiness Plan.

UWFT continues to hire – tell your friends!

The Program is very close to hiring an AVP to lead UWFT, and continues to recruit for other key roles – including hiring several of the 19 new positions posted. All positions can be found on UWHires or the UWFT Website. We hope you’ll help us spread the word about these exciting opportunities!   

Upcoming Workshops and Presentations

Over the course of the next several months, the UWFT program team will be calling on some of our stakeholders to participate in small Workshops designed to gain alignment on the vision, operating model and guardrails. In addition, you might find yourself hearing an update of the UWFT program at an upcoming meeting. In October, we’ll be meeting with the Board of Deans and Chancellors, the Engineering Administrators, Administrators’ Council meeting, UW-IT Communications, and several others. If you’re on the organizing committee of a group that would like to hear from the Program, please reach out to UWFTAsk@uw.edu.

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