Workday@Richmond Technology Support
“For the first build, we usually see an 80-95% overall success rate. Richmond knocked it out of the park with a 99.32% success rate! These results show a solid understanding of your data and how it will all work together in Workday.” That was how an Accenture consultant described the University of Richmond’s data conversion success rate when it was loaded into our first test instance of Workday last fall. In subsequent builds, we improved even further. Data conversion was the first of three efforts that Tech Lead Lee Parker’s Enterprise Applications team worked on for January’s Workday implementation. The team was supported by Director of the IS Project Office Susan Galvin (Parker says of Galvin, “Her detail orientation saved me many times.”).
For this project, data conversion was needed to move the information from the older Banner system over to Workday. During many months of implementation, the Enterprise Applications team converted the data four times. Deb White and Tequita Hawkins led the data conversion efforts for Human Resources and Finance, respectively. Working with them were Valerie Caminiti, Mason Cox, Pavel Perinka, and Joon Han.
As the project progressed, the four who had supported data conversion turned their focus to the integrations that are needed between Workday and dozens of other services and systems, such as Amazon, Bank of America, and Cigna. Integrations mean that data travels from one system to the other, or sometimes back and forth between both. By go-live on January 2, more than 75 integrations had been created by the group and tested by the functional project team members.
The third effort established Workday security, and was led by Ray Cargill with Alex Szymanski and Cory Anderson. For Workday to function properly, every user in the system must be granted a set of permissions -- things they can do or see. For Workday, these permissions are gathered into roles that are assigned to each user. It was a painstaking task to learn and configure thousands of appropriate permissions required for the Workday application.
By go-live, the data had been converted, integrations were tested, and security roles had been assigned to more than 4600 staff, faculty, and student employees. Workday@Richmond program director Julie Farmer remarked, "Our Technology Team’s dedication, hard work, and competence positioned us for a successful go-live. Despite the pressure of this large-scale project, our Technology Team persisted with diligence, patience, and a heavy dose of humor!"