September News | UW Finance Transformation

UWFT Program News Update

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 message is the first of many as we begin sharing regular updates on the program’s status on a monthly basis (or more frequently, as needed). You can also stay connected and informed via the UWFT Website and the UWFT Change Network SharePoint (an access-controlled SharePoint site).

UWFT is gaining momentum!

The first several months of the Readiness Phase have been heavily focused on gathering stakeholder input, assessing lessons learned from past implementations, devising strategy/developing overarching plans, finding the right vendor partner, hiring for the program team, and of course, the Benchmarking & Data Gathering effort. Visit the Timeline & Scope page for a glance at the overall program timeline.

Benchmarking & Data Gathering: 100 percent participation and on-time completion!

Thanks to a herculean effort by hundreds of administrators, as well as scores of technical and functional experts across the University, we successfully met the Benchmarking and Data Gathering 7/31 deadline. We cannot say it loudly enough in email, but we’ll try: THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!!!

Benchmarking & Data Gathering: What’s next?

The UWFT program team’s attention has already shifted to the next steps for this effort: analyzing the thousands of pieces of data we’ve collected from you. We may have questions about that data, and have already started reaching out to some of you. In addition, you may also see that the status of your files has started to change from “Complete” to “Reviewed by UWFT.” In the fall, we’ll plan to share the findings with you either in person or via email. This data is helping to inform the Foundation Data Model, the Change Management strategy, and the Readiness Plan.

Deloitte is officially the UWFT Readiness Phase partner

Earlier in July, EVP of Finance & Administration Jeff Scott shared with campus leadership that Deloitte was selected as our “apparent successful bidder” for the Readiness Phase, contingent only on successful contract negotiations. We’re pleased to share that the contract has now been signed, and the team from Deloitte is already working onsite here at the UW!

UWFT is hiring – join our team!

The accelerated timeline for the Readiness Phase necessitates a ramping up of efforts to ensure an adequately resourced program team. In addition to actively interviewing for the AVP position to lead UWFT, we are excited to share that we are recruiting for other key roles. Our first stage of hiring will more than double our current team by adding 19 new positions in late summer/early fall, with a second hiring stage planned soon thereafter. The first positions are posted to UWHires and linked on the UWFT Website. We hope you’ll help us spread the word about these exciting opportunities.

Stay informed – there will be many opportunities for involvement in this multi-year program

This is the University’s largest administrative transformation to date, and leaders across the institution support this effort and have confidence in the strength of the program team and governance strategy. But, we can’t make this transformation happen without your ongoing involvement. During the Readiness Period, we’ll be reaching out to grow our governance teams as envisioned – including formalizing and/or building some of the advisory groups whose insights and perspectives will be immeasurably impactful to the success of the program.

More to come!