Finance Strategic Transformation Update

Would you rather listen to this update instead of reading it?  Tune in to WFST's broadcast for June 25!

The Adaptive Insights Team has completed the onboarding sessions in preparation for FY21 budget revision and FY22 budget development.  During those sessions, departments and units were introduced to the basic navigation and functionality of Adaptive Insights and the three budget modules (GA Compensation, GA Non-Compensation, and GL Revenue) that are used for data entry during budget development.  The team also familiarized attendees with eight pre-built reports to view budget and actuals data based on the familiar UFM format. Users will receive further support after their initial onboarding session, including Office Hours with UVA and Deloitte representation that will help answer questions around both Adaptive and the UVA budget process, and additional training sessions and resources.  For more information, check out the AI Resources page on the FST website.

Phase 3 of FST saw a shift in scope for our governing bodies. The revised governance structure will more effectively operationalize the team and stakeholder's efforts, making sure individuals who are familiar with various levels of the organization are able to advise our leadership and the project team at the right time on matters within their expertise.  The Executive Committee, the Leadership Council, functional owners, and project workstream leads are the decision-making entities in this structure, with the Steering Committee, Advisory Group, and Fiscal Administrators group (along with other stakeholders as needed) providing insight.  

We are deeply appreciative of our governance groups for collaborating with us through the first two phases of this journey, and for sticking with us during a stressful and unexpected situation at the beginning of Phase 3.  You can read about the changes in detail on the FST website under the Governance tab.

We posted a Who’s Who, in terms of team structure, on the FST website.  Visit the Team Structure page for a quick explanation of how the team is set up.  

How are FST decisions made?  All FST decisions are made using the RAPID framework, but formal RAPID documentation (as you saw with the recent decision to go with Workday Expenses in place of our current expensing system, Chrome River) is only required with Tier 1 and Tier 2 decisions. You’ll always be able to access that documentation in the Online Community.  You can see more on RAPID and the tiers of decision-making and who’s responsible for what decisions, in this blog piece. In the spirit of transparency, we’ll share decisions in our normal communications channels when they are made, and we’re also working on a user-friendly decision log that will live on the FST website and be consistently updated  

You may be wondering how the project timeline (and how that timeline intersects with your work) has changed since the decision to extend the go live date by one year.  We’re pulling that information together, and should have solid details to share with you by the next blog digest or before.

 Since the architect sessions are now complete, we are heading into a period beginning this fall called “Configuration & Prototype” where we will be taking the information and decisions from the architect sessions and building our first instance of Workday Financials. The project timeline has room for at least two prototype and validation periods. Because of our recent timeline extension, we may even have time for a third period of refinement and feedback.

Service and Collaboration: Student Financial Services responds to student needs

On March 11, UVA announced that students would not return to Grounds after spring break as part of the University’s overall efforts to quell the spread of Coronavirus. That change, along with a host of other repercussions generated by the pandemic, put many students in difficult, unexpected circumstances.

From the financial difficulties of traveling home, to the need to hastily assemble the tech required to take classes online, to the unanticipated need to pay for rent, food, and other basic necessities while they or their families were suddenly unemployed, the needs were many and widespread.

Even before it became official that students would not be returning to Grounds this spring and that the fallout from the Coronavirus was going to be considerable, Student Financial Services sprang into action.

The team immediately arranged a process to award money to meet students’ most pressing needs. Their priority at first was providing students with funds to get home and to ensure they had the technology required to continue their instruction online.

Assistant Vice President for Student Financial Services Steve Kimata is quick to point out that SFS was not alone in its relief efforts. The President’s Office and the Information Technology department worked with SFS to coordinate providing laptops and Wi-Fi access to students. Another group from Student Affairs joined in to help provide relief related to the cost of living, providing money for food or rent.

“We assisted with lots of technology requests,” says Sarah Doran of SFS.

“There were many students who were previously relying on computer labs or using an old laptop that wouldn’t support Zoom, or who live in a place without good Wi-Fi and needed a hotspot, or money for more data,” she says.

Doran also recounts assisting students who were studying abroad get home, arranging relief with medical expenses, providing funds for groceries, and even steering students toward appropriate resources to help them apply for unemployment when necessary.

By the time the Federal Government passed the CARES Act’s Higher Education Emergency Relief Fund (HEERF) in late March, SFS had already awarded approximately $400,000 to around 800 students in need.

The federal funds provided to UVA by HEERF (some $5.8 million) allowed SFS to expand its efforts to help students affected by the pandemic. As that funding began to roll in, SFS reworked its intake process and partnered with Student Affairs to stand up an improved application process using the University’s existing scholarship management tool. Student Affairs committed nearly a dozen staff members to review applications for aid.

As of June 12, UVA has awarded $1.95 million in combined UVA and HEERF funds to approximately 2,000 students, counting those who were helped before the CARES act and those who don’t qualify for CARES that need help anyway.

As Doran notes, to qualify for federal money, students were required to be eligible for federal financial aid (usually in the form of having a current FAFSA on file). For the students who had not completed a FAFSA and who found themselves in a worsened financial position due to the impact of the Coronavirus, this presented a barrier; however, the University has been able to assist those students with University funds.

Although the spring semester has wrapped up, student needs continue to roll in. SFS and Student Affairs will continue awarding federal and University funds to students enrolled in the summer session and those who are looking ahead to fall.

“We’re already starting to see fall technology requests,” says Doran, adding that SFS and its partners across Grounds are here and ready to assist.

On the FST horizon: Configuration and Prototype

Contributed by Nicole Ferretti

In the last blog digest, I shared what’s around the bend now that we’re wrapping up the Architect Sessions.  Read more about that here. 

I thought I'd share a little more detail today!

Generally speaking, we’re heading into a period beginning in the fall called “Configuration & Prototype” where we will be taking the information and decisions from the architect sessions and building our first instance of Workday Financials.  

We’ve used the metaphor of “building a house” a lot with FST; with that in mind, it’s like the architect sessions gave us the information to put together a blueprint for that purpose. 

Following the build, we’ll have a fairly solid blueprint in place (via the configuration workbooks), the really exciting part starts!  Using our house metaphor, this stage is rather like the future residents of the house getting to take a walkthrough the spec home – you get to see how things are set up, check out the fixtures, get a feel for the flow, and make note of what you like and don’t like, what will work and what won’t.

The project timeline has room for at least two prototype periods.  After the first round, we’ll use your feedback to improve the system (to make changes to our house that make it more functional for you) and then we’ll have you validate it again (time for another walk-through!).  Because of our recent timeline extension, we may even have time for a third period of refinement and feedback.

When I visited with the Fiscal Administrators Group at their June 17 meeting, I shared a couple of illustrations in my presentation slides.  I thought they might be helpful for everyone to see, so we’ve copied them here as well.  The key thing to remember about Configuration & Prototype is that our end users will have an opportunity to provide input that will guide the design. 

 

• What are “user stories”?  User stories are short, simple descriptions of a feature in the system told from the perspective of the person who desires the capability, usually a user or customer of system.
  
• We use the term “playback” to refer to the visual review of the tenant by our stakeholders.  In effect, the playbacks are validation sessions.
• Remember that the “tenant” is our instance of Workday Financials here at UVA, and “configuration workbooks” are the blueprints for that tenant.

FREE NCCI Virtual Conference: “Transforming Today’s Reality into Tomorrow’s Opportunity” July 8-9 2020

Contributed by Danielle Hancock

Need some ideas to help you with your 2020 UVAFinance shared goal? Looking for way to help you be more innovative in your work? Look no further!

The Network for Change and Continuous Innovation (NCCI) 2020 annual conference will be digital. No travel costs! No Conference Fees!

• Some of the offered sessions include:
• Fixed Mindset Interrupted
• Blind Automation and Other Process Improvement Failures…How to Avoid Them
• Building Bridges: Shared Communities Across Campus
• Why Office 365? Join Us to See Six Ways We Use It to Simplify Collaboration and Inspire Innovation
• …And many more

To find the full list of sessions: See NCCI Conference Site
The conference is free for all UVA faculty and staff.

To register and for more information on the schedule and offerings: See NCCI Conference Site

For more information on how to register as UVA faculty or staff: See Organizational Excellence

If you can’t attend on July 8-9, register anyway – anyone who registers for the conference will have access to the on-demand content at a later date.

Sarah Doran, SFS Assistant Director and previous conference attendee, tells us why she feels that conference is a good use of your time.

The people that I met at the NCCI conference were some of the most innovative and forward thinking people in higher education. But what struck me the most is that they’re the same as you and me, they just don’t let “the way we’ve always done it” be the first thought they have about a problem or process. They think “how can this be simpler?”. 

Given our current state of constant change, we have to improve to survive. Why not hear from folks who have turned their organizations upside down, one office at a time, to make everyone’s work lives better? Join the conversation. You might find that it’s easier to enact change than you think!

 

Adaptive Insights Update

The Adaptive Insights Team has completed the onboarding sessions in preparation for FY21 budget revision and FY22 budget development. 

During those sessions, departments and units were introduced to the basic navigation and functionality of Adaptive Insights and the three budget modules (GA Compensation, GA Non-Compensation, and GL Revenue) that are used for data entry during budget development. The team also familiarized attendees with eight pre-built reports to view budget and actuals data based on the familiar UFM format.

Once familiar with Adaptive, users were then asked to validate their FY21 University budget submission, identifying and resolving any variances, and then to add people-level detail (a new functionality in Adaptive) to their FY21 original budget through either manual input or mass upload.

Users will receive further support after their initial onboarding session:

• Office Hours with UVA and Deloitte representation will help answer questions around both Adaptive and the UVA budget process
• The Office of Change Management will support training and communications for the Adaptive Insights team and their stakeholders
• Additional training sessions will be scheduled that focus on additional Adaptive Insights functionality that will be built upon during the FY22 budget development process.

For more information on training and support and to sign up for office hours, visit the FST website’s Adaptive Insights resource page.

How are FST decisions made?

There have been and will continue to be many decisions that we have to make as we move through Finance Strategic Transformation. Early in the project, we knew we would have to be careful about getting the right feedback from the right stakeholders, having the correct people making the decision, and correctly identifying the impact of the decision. As you can imagine, every choice we make along the FST road has an effect on a great many other people, processes, and systems.

To answer this need, the FST Team worked with our Governance groups (see our updated Governance groups here: https://financetransformation.virginia.edu/governance) and executive leadership to develop a decision making framework that involves three tiers of decisions. All FST decisions are made using the RAPID framework, but formal RAPID documentation (as you saw with the recent decision to go with Workday Expenses in place of our current expensing system, Chrome River) is only required with Tier 1 and Tier 2 decisions. You’ll always be able to access that documentation in the Online Community.

To sort decisions into the correct tier, we consider:

• Scope: whether or not the decision broadens or reduces the commitment of the type of work that will be completed on the project.
• Schedule: changes the schedule of the project go-live date or milestone
• Budget: changes the budget of the project, e.g., needs additional resourcing
• Impact on Stakeholders: Impacts a large group of stakeholders or has a high impact on current functionality.
• Policy: creates a new UVAFinance policy or involves a change to an existing policy

If the decision impacts one or more of the above considerations, it is a Tier 1 decision.

Tier 1 decisions require RAPID documentation: 

• Decide: Executive Committee / Leadership Council
• Agree: Functional Owners, depending on what the issue is
• Input: Advisory entities
• Recommend: Workstream Leads

If the decision does not impact one or more of the above considerations, it falls to the Functional Owner to decide whether or not they want to get formal input from advisory entities in order to make a decision. If yes, it is a Tier 2 decision.

Tier 2 decisions require RAPID documentation:

• Decide: Functional Owners
• Agree: Workstream Leads, depending on what the issue is
• Input: Advisory entities
• Recommend: Workstream Leads

If the decision does not require the Functional Owner to get formal input from advisory entities, it is a Tier 3 decision.

Tier 3 decisions do not require RAPID documentation:

• Decide: Functional Owners or Workstream Leads
• Input: Business Process Owner
• Recommend: Workstream Leads

In the spirit of transparency, we’ll share decisions in our normal communications channels when they are made – like here in the UVAFinance blog, as well as the Online Community and WFST. We’re also working on a user-friendly decision log that will live on the FST website and be consistently updated 

Remember that we always want to hear from you if you have questions or concerns about decisions and their impact on your work. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to us with questions or concerns. 

Uncharted Territory: Sharing Resources During the Coronavirus Response

UVAHR RESOURCES

FREE ACCESS TO SCIENCE-BACKED DIGITAL PROGRAMS TO SUPPORT YOUR MENTAL WELLBEING

To support your mental well-being - during both the night & day - Hoos Well has partnered with Big Health to offer all UVA employees and spouses free access to two science-backed digital programs called Daylight and Sleepio. Register by July 12 to receive an entire year of free access.

Daylight can help those who feel constantly worried or find it hard to concentrate during the day by teaching you ways to manage stress and the negative emotions in your life. 

Sleepio can help those whose racing mind prevents falling asleep or causes waking during the night by teaching you behavioral techniques to get to the root of stubborn sleep issues.

Learn more about Sleepio and Daylight (Netbadge required)

COVID-19 WEBSITE REORGANIZATION

HR Communications has now built 18 COVID-19-related pages on the HR website, and recently re-organized the pages so that all pages related to financial mitigation for managers and employees are in one place, for convenience.

The Financial Mitigation landing page can be found on the COVID-19 home page.

2020 PTO CASH OUT UPDATE

As President Ryan announced on April 14, the ability to cash out Paid Time Off (PTO) has been suspended until further notice. However, the cap for carrying forward unused PTO hours from 2020 into 2021 has been raised by 80 hours. 

For more information and answers to FAQs, please visit the PTO Cash Out & Retirement Adjustment webpage.

CONSULTATION SERVICES FOR LEADING TEAMS REMOTELY

• How do leaders maintain team cohesion and engagement remotely?

• How do supervisors ensure needed work gets done while balancing equity and the unique circumstances of team members from a distance?

If you have found yourself asking these or similar questions, our Organizational Development Consultants are available to help you navigate remote-leadership issues during this time of uncertainty and change. 

If you are interested in learning more about our virtual coaching and consultation services for leaders and teams, please submit a request to the Organizational Development team.

FEAP Resources

FEAP's VIRTUAL COVID RESOURCES

FEAP is your UVA partner, here to support you during times of distress and uncertainly. We understand many are experiencing stress, grief, and mental health symptoms as a result of the myriad adjustments the pandemic is demanding; the potential health risks of COVID-19; financial insecurity; and the latest alarming events which have exposed long-standing racial injustices and led to social unrest and action. 

FEAP services are free and confidential and range from assessment, short term counseling, referrals, consultation, support groups, and education. 

We invite you to explore our offerings or schedule a 1:1 appointment. Even if you do not personally access these services, being knowledgeable of them can equip you to help support others.

LEARN MORE ABOUT COPING AND WHAT STAGE YOU ARE IN

Coping is often not a linear process and most people find they respond differently to various triggers at different times. Ensuring self-care, accessing support, and strengthening coping strategies will help you adapt and build resilience.  https://uvafeap.com/services/virtual-resources/?utm_source=feap_newsletter&utm_medium=News&utm_campaign=June_2020

From your UVAFinance LSPs: New Help Desk!

The UVA Finance Help Desk has been migrated to a new host.  Here's what you need to know!

NEW- Submit a request through email

You can now submit a request by emailing finhelp@virginia.edu. Just remember to provide a relevant Subject Title and the necessary details in the body.  You can also reply to comments/questions from the LSP through the request email and it will automatically update the ticket.

The SAME- Submit a request through the user console

Here is the new link for the User Console

NOTE: You will need to be connected to HSVPN in order to access the console on the new host.

You still enter the console with your computing ID and eservices password. And don't forget to set the ORG drop down option to Finance.

What you may need to do:

If you have created a browser bookmark or a desktop shortcut to the old help desk, you will need to delete those and create new ones with the updated host address. The shortcut link in your start menu has already been updated.

Also NEW- Replying to LSP Notifications

You may notice this notification is from finhelp@virginia.edu. We plan to use this finhelp address for all future notifications.

If you have questions and reply to this email it will create a ticket, which will help the LSP team efficiently document requests for assistance.

COVID-19 Supply Purchasing Guidance

Procurement and Supplier Diversity Services is rising to meet the challenge of purchasing COVID-related supplies in a market defined by rapid fluctuations.

Earlier this month, 300 people participated in a COVID-19 Supply Purchasing Webinar hosted by PSDS.  In the webinar, PSDS shared the sourcing strategies they have put in place to make the most effective use of their purchasing power.  

Key takeaways:

• PSDS has made central purchases of many COVID-related supplies for the University Community (to assist in preparation for compliance with Policy SEC-045):
• hand sanitizer dispensers - Facilities Management is currently distributing these on Grounds
• cloth face coverings - FM is currently distributing these
• kits for students - distribution expected in late July / early August
• The Marketplace now features COVID-19 supplies listing for other commonly-requested items such as face masks.  

Departments can find information to make their own purchases in the COVID-19 Showcase on Marketplace.

The PSDS COVID response team is eager to assist you with your purchasing questions. 

You can view the entire webinar and presentation slides, plus view more guidance on COVID-related purchasing, on the PSDS website.   

Read more about how Procurement is working to make the return to Grounds safe for all on UVAToday.