Finance Welcomes Scott Adams as Director of Business Services

With just over a week under his belt, Scott Adams is settling into his new role in UVAFinance as the Director of Business Services. Adams comes to Finance from the Batten School. He served as the Director of IT there for eight years.

Scott Adams

What attracted Adams to join the UVAFinance team? According to Adams, it was the vision for change and the commitment to make our customers the center of business services. With the Finance Strategic Transformation (FST) project now in Phase 3: Implementation, the transition also seemed timely. Over the past several years in Batten, Adams led efforts to transform the service experience for students, faculty, and staff. The aim was to fulfill the needs and wants of those in Batten as well as having the school’s systems continue to integrate well with systems across UVA.

“The emphasis was on providing service first and then having strong data analytics behind it,” says Adams.

As part of this transformative experience, Adams oversaw implementation of Salesforce, a platform that assists with case management. UVAFinance plans to use the system as well, so Adams’ familiarity will be a great asset.

His new role is an evolution of the Senior Director Finance and Administration position, and Adams will oversee the Finance Local Support Partner (LSP) group, administrative staff, and the development team. He will also collaborate with Andrew Sallans, the new Finance Engagement Manager, on the Salesforce implementation. Adams explains that continuous improvement is always part if implementation of new systems, such as Salesforce and Workday.

Scott and his wife Grace ready to race. 

“The focus,” he says, “is creating good architecture. The building process happens in layers once a strong foundation has been established. There’s testing with small groups and working with key stakeholders to gather feedback to inform potential changes. It’s important to have the right champions in the room—people with broad institutional knowledge who will ask challenging questions.”

Adams’ first priority will be the service model project and Salesforce implementation to relieve pressure on Finance’s current ticketing system. A benefit of Salesforce is that it’s more than just a case management system.

“The system offers customers a connection to a knowledge bank and FAQs to help them self-support,” Adams explains. “We get to determine how training is attached to that and how information will flow in Salesforce.”

When not running major implementations at work, Adams also enjoys running marathons, and previously ultramarathons, with his wife.

“We use them to explore,” he says. “Our plan is to run a marathon in Berlin in September.”

He typically runs four or five marathons a year, having completed about 120 so far.