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Click here for Shared Drive Cleanup; Here's the link to the fall schedule |
Contributed by Patty Marbury
The Training Team continues to prepare to deliver training in May of 2022. The team has been hard at work logging all of our business processes and associated tasks. For each business process or task, we indicate which type of training will be needed. This will serve as the foundation for developing the curriculum we provide for each area and business role.Additionally, we are working on mapping security roles to business roles. This will allow us to ensure that all stakeholders complete the training required for the security role they will have in Workday. Later, we will work with leaders in schools and units to map security roles to individuals, so that everyone will know who needs to complete what training.
As always, please reach out if you have questions or concerns! We're happy to help.
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Read more about Workday Financials Training on the blog:
Two years ago, UVA made national news with the execution of three bond sales at historically low rates (see the story from UVAToday). This summer, they did it again, issuing $100,000,000 of tax-exempt thirty-year bonds and $300,000,000 of taxable thirty-year bonds at historically low rates, setting two records!
The tax-exempt bonds achieved the lowest yield-to-maturity ever for any such bond issuance, and the taxable bonds achieved the lowest credit spread ever for such bonds.
The Unviersity was positioned to take advantage of favorable market conditions for this sale after the three major rating agencies (Moody's, S&P, and Fitch) all reaffirmed UVA's triple-A bond ratings and overall stable outlook.
The bond proceeds will provide financing for projects under the multi-year capital plan, to purchase remaining membership interest with Novant Health in Northern Virginia, and much more.
Congratulations to the Finance team, especially UVA Treasury, for the work they do to build upon previous success in the markets and to strengthen UVA's financial position in the long term.
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Get a peek behind the scenes of the 2019 bond deal.
Learn more about Treasury, Risk Management, and Julie Richardson, UVA's Treasurer.
Want to listen to this update instead of reading it? Click here to tune into the WFST Broadcast!
Schools and units are now several weeks into
Foundation Data Model, or FDM, work.
They’re mapping the old chart of accounts, the PTAO, to the new FDM
that we’ll use for Workday Financials. There’s
an expansive resource site for the FDM work in the online community that you can access here: https://communityhub.virginia.edu/docs/DOC-2982
Adaptive Planning
The Adaptive Planning Team is continuing to shape Adaptive, Workday’s planning and budgeting software, to be ready to integrate with Workday financials in July of 2022. UVA has been using Adaptive since the summer the pandemic began, in order to take advantage of its enhanced planning functionality in that really unpredictable time. Since then, users have been working with the Adaptive Team to make improvements to the software to make it more useful to UVA. Read more on the blog.
Moving from Configuration & Prototype to End-to-End Testing
At the end of August, we officially say goodbye to the Configuration and Prototype phase of FST. As of September 1, we’ll be in a brave new phase: end-to-end testing, where the FST Team tests business processes from start to finish.
Read more about testing on the blog
What did we achieve in Config & Prototype?
Training Update
The Training Team is working hard to deliver the training that will allow you and your team to be successful doing your jobs in Workday Financials upon go live. The decision on timing of training is based on training best practices and the years and years of experience the training team has, plus comparisons to what other higher ed institutions found successful. It boils down to this: Training sticks with learners best when they don’t have time to forget what they’ve learned before they can actually get into the system. We want our stakeholders to learn on a system that appears and functions as it will at go-live. Read more from Patty Marbury on the blog.
Recon@ update
The team is working with stakeholders to find a way to build real-time approvals on the front end, within Workday Financials, but we’ll probably still need post-transactional attestation provided by an outside tool. Check out the detail on the blog.
Continuous Improvement: UFM 2.0
With many financial changes underway and new university leadership at the helm, the University Financial Model is under review to make sure it supports 2030 strategic plan goals. A committee is doing a strategic review of the model, to make sure it serves the needs of the organization, and also assessing how the current model is serving the needs of schools and units across UVA – focusing on the model’s users. Learn more on the blog.
1. Schools and units are a few weeks into mapping our current chart of accounts to the new FDM; they're working from a resource page in the Online Community.
2. The Adaptive Planning Team continues to shape Adaptive to integrate with Workday Financials at go-live next summer. Users are collaborating with the team to make improvements to this 3.0 version. Read more on the blog.
3. Training begins in May 2022, so that users can readily put what they learn into practice and can work with a tenant that looks as it will at go-live. Read more on the blog.
4. Configuration & Prototype is wrapping up and End-to-End testing is on the horizon. Here's what we accomplished in C&P and what's in store for E2E.
5. The University Financial Model 2.0 work is a great example of the Continuous Improvement that comprises one of the four main parts of FST. Read more about UFM on the blog and don't forget: we go live on July 1, 2022!
We have over 70 departments and 40 department managers in Arts & Sciences. Since Adaptive is in the cloud, it’s great that the people who have the best knowledge and information about their departments can update their budget directly in the system. We're looking forward to the connection with Workday Financials and seeing how the new FDM will make it better and more transparent. We do have better reporting in 2.0, but I've seen snapshots of the integration with Workday where budgeting and reporting at the person level will be a 1:1, and that's going to be great. Even though there are still a lot of unknowns at this time as the Adaptive team are working on building 3.0, I'm excited about the improvement and moving on to the next stage in the process.
-- Alicia Rudie
I appreciate that we have Adaptive as the primary system for collecting and depositing budget details, and in particular, I love the personnel functionality. My colleagues in Batten appreciate that it sets the stage for the managerial reporting we'd like to do. Because we participated in the pilot, I've been in Adaptive for a long time and know what its capabilities are, so sometimes my patience gets short with what we can do in it now -- I want the robust reporting I know the system is capable of. UVA is absolutely on the right track with Adaptive, and I'm looking forward to the functionalities we'll have in 3.0.
-- Charles Rush
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Devin Foster, DHA, MA |
Foster's internship was completed at UVA Medical Center under Chief Operating Officer Jody Reyes and staff.
"I have always wanted to go to and graduate from a Historically Black College & University like VUL, and their newly-created program for working professionals provided that opportunity," Foster says.
He credits Dean Rex Hammond and Dr. Atul Gupta for convincing him to enroll, and extends his thanks to UVAHR for connecting him with UVA Health.
"UVA Medical Center is the number one hospital in Virginia, so it was an honor to shadow leadership and gain valuable knowledge," he says.
What's next for this newly-minted doctor? Foster says, "We'll see what the future holds for me as I build lasting friendships and connections on this rewarding journey."
The resource page will be updated regularly as information changes and new resources are added. As you'll see on the page, files have the date they were last updated included, and new additions, like those mentioned above, are indicated.
For FDM mapping questions or to share ideas for additional resources, please email FDMMapping@virginia.edu.
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Click for a larger view |
The Finance Strategic Transformation (FST) team is currently building the end-to-end (E2E) tenant in Workday Financials, expected to be completed this month. This tenant will enable us to confirm that our configuration of Workday will function as we need it to and is ready for our production tenant, which is the one we will use at go-live on July 1, 2022.
Fear not—the User Experience Review (UER) tenant and testing will occur after E2E and will involve a broad group of end users. During UER, users will test selected scenarios that include key processes to mimic what real-world use of the system will be like. User experience testing will also contribute valuable information to the training team to ensure that training-related communication and job aids appropriately meet user needs ahead of go-live.
The timeline below (click to enlarge) shows upcoming testing activities.
The Office of Financial Planning & Analysis is looking toward the future state with an eye for continuous improvement. The OFP&A team, led by Katie Walker, is engaging in monthly workshops where they review their processes. The sessions are facilitated by Angela Knobloch.
Continuous Improvement is a key part of Finance Strategic Transformation, and as OFP&A sees it, now is the right time to make sure their processes are serving their needs and their stakeholders' needs in the most streamlined, user-friendly way possible.
In their most recent session, the team dissected the settlements process, identifying pain points to reconsider.
"The team has learned about CI tools and then just run with them," says Knobloch.
"They're learning to challenge the status quo and apply that to everything they do."
Team member Anne Marie Cumiskey says the sessions have been helpful in changing the team's perspective on what have come to be mundane duties.
"As we examine a process from start to finish, we have started asking questions: why are we doing it this way? Do we even need to do this?" she says.
We look forward to seeing the improvements the team comes up with -- watch the blog for future updates!
Contributed by Patty Marbury
As we move into the testing phase of Finance Strategic Transformation this September, Workday Financials training will likely be increasingly on peoples' minds. As we shared recently, there won't be a practice tenant or "sandbox" that people will use, but you shouldn't worry about being ill-prepared at go-live on July 1, 2022. The FST Team has a solid plan to have you comfortable with the system within the next ten months.
The key parts of that plan are testing and training. Since I'm the FST Training Lead, you can probably imagine which one I'm going to talk about today. Training will be delivered in May and June of next year. You may look at that target date and think that sounds pretty late -- why not start training earlier?
The decision on the timing of the training is a strategic one the training team is basing off training best practices, comparisons to what other higher ed institutions have done, and the years and years of combined experience of our training team.
The decision boils down to the fact that training sticks with learners best when they don't have time to forget what they've learned before they can actually get into the system. We need to use what we've learned, or we don't retain it (that's why you're probably pretty rusty on that foreign language you learned in high school).
Another practical reason for training later in the timeline is that as the FST team and, later in the process, some stakeholders from schools and units test the system, they'll be making adjustments to the system fairly regularly. We want you to learn within a system that appears and functions as it will at go-live.
The Training Team is confident that we have a plan that will give you want you need to be proficient within the system at go-live. We've have been and will continue to be working intensively to deliver necessary and effective training to you and your team.
We'll continue to update you on the training plan as time goes on, so watch the blog for more. And, as always, if you have questions or concerns, don't hesitate to reach out to me.
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For more information on training, check out this recent blog post and the links it contains.
The next cohort of UVA's Cornerstone Program has been chosen, and among the 30 participants will be Onyi Odumosu. Odumosu is a senior project manager within the Finance Strategic Transformation project.
Candidates for the Cornerstone Program are nominated by Vice Presidents and Deans, and they are high performers who demonstrate leadership and management qualifications necessary for future senior leadership potential. Participants collaborate on team projects over the course of a year, which are then presented at a graduation ceremony in September.
Congratulations, Onyi!
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Read more about the Cornerstone Project on the UVAHR site and learn how to submit a project for cohort consideration:
Read more about Onyi on the UVAFinance blog
Check out past Cornerstone participants and their projects: Shannon Wampler and Kristie Sojka, Mark Anderson, Isaiah Behnke
At this month's Steering Committee, the FST team provided an update on several decisions that are currently in the works. Below, we've provided a closer look at what's going on with some of those decisions.
Finalized Decisions:
Open Decisions:
For more information, make sure to check out the FST Decision Log for the latest updates on all decisions.
From Brandi Van Ormer
Every day, we write hundreds, sometimes thousands, of words. Words are powerful, and they're our go-to way of communicating. Words are wonderful . . . but you may sometimes feel the need to break up the sea of written words with something that will catch your audience's attention and give them meaning through another medium.
To that end, I offer you these three free-to-inexpensive tools that can make your communications life easier, get your work more views and interest, and allow you to break up with Word and PowerPoint.*
First things first. Things to know about these tools:
1. Canva.com: the most widely known.
a. Plays well with InDesign
b. Exports in a variety of formats
c. Build your brand resources on it: Colors, images, logos
d. Templates for specific channels/uses that really will speed up your work
e. Use it as a great source of stock imagery if nothing else
2. Infogram.com: Data visualization heaven.
a. It’s like Canva but with a back end for loading your data, plus icons in addition to stock images
b. Upload a spreadsheet or plug in your #s
c. See immediately how the data presents most usefully
d. Do infographics instead of fact sheets
3. Animoto.com: Easy, short video like a boss!
a. Like Canva but for video: stock stills, stock music, and stock video clips (and you can upload your own of each content type)
b. Storyboarding format that makes it easy to plan the videoc. Great option to break up your written content: make a quick video, or even have stills with a voiceover
* because they don't love you anyway
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The climb is steep but we've got this! |
As we exit Config & Prototype, a phase we've been in for a year, it's good to take a few moments to look back at all we've accomplished together:
The FST Team gives a big THANK YOU to everyone in the schools and units who have worked right beside us through Config & Prototype. We look forward to entering this new phase with you and getting one step closer to go live in July of 2022!
Onward and upward!
Making it Okay Not to Know (Presented by Organizational Excellence)
Uncertainty is everywhere. But what if we could make it comfortable and even joyful not to know? What if we reimagined uncertainty and lack of clarity as an opportunity for deep learning? How would our work feel if we focused more on questions and less on answers? And, importantly, how can we build inclusive cultures that thrive on testing possibilities rather than getting things exactly right? During this session, we will use the foundation of neuroscience as a tool to address the paralysis and fear that often accompany the need to try something new or navigate through profound uncertainty.As we’ve reported prior to today, representatives
from schools and units got together on August 3 for an FDM Mapping Kickoff
session. Participants got an overview of
the mapping timeline and process and were assigned to work in collaborative
groups with similar schools and units in order to make the work a little
easier. The mapping process will go from
now until March 2022.
Will there be a Sandbox?
The short answer is that no, there won’t be a practice tenant or "sandbox" as such. Why not? One thing that makes a sandbox difficult in our situation here at UVA is that if we had a sandbox between now and go-live, we would be offering that environment to people before they had any training whatsoever, which means their sandbox experience wouldn’t be very meaningful. We want to give our time the ultimate goal of pushing UVA's instance of Workday Financials across the finish line at go-live. You can read more about this decision and learn more about how users will be able to "get their hands dirty" in Workday Financials before go-live.
End-to-End Testing
Testing begins this September! If you would
like to know more about testing, we recommend the articles below. Also, FST Testing Lead Sunil Sah has been making the
rounds to FST governance groups, so if you’d like to hear him talk about the testing
plan, check out the recording of the August 4 Fiscal Administrators' meeting.
Putting Workday to the Test (link to FA video)
Getting Everything Just Right: FST Testing
Read more about Sunil Sah, FST Testing Lead
FST Website Content Migrating to New UVA Site
The new UVAFinance website goes live August 16! This is an agile rollout, and we'll gradually be adding all UVAFinance areas to this one, integrated, function-based site. Finance Transformation content is one of the first areas to be migrated. Visit uvafinance.virginia.edu to see the new site (FST content is located in the upper left). Even though the site is live, we’ll still be making adjustments, and of course, working toward getting the other UVAFinance department on the new site, so for a while, the old sites of those first few departments will still be live before we put redirects in place. That gives our stakeholders a chance to get familiar with new locations of the content they visit most frequently.
Read more about the new UVAFinance website
Reporting & Analytics Focus Group
The Reporting & Analytics team is holding meetings with a sampling of users across Grounds to take an initial look at high-priority financial reports. This is just a preliminary examination of reports and not full-fledged testing, but it's a good first step to make sure we're headed in the right direction with reporting. Read more on the blog.
1. FDM Testing is underway and will continue through March 2022. Read more on the blog.
2. There will not be a "sandbox" or practice tenant of Workday Financials, but stakeholders can still expect opportunities to get comfortable with the tenant. Read more here.
3. The FST Reporting & Analytics Team is meeting with a focus group to provide usability feedback on Workday Financials reports. Read more on the blog.
4. FST web content is moving: as a part of UVAFinance's new, integrated website, FST content is moving to uvafinance.virginia.edu. The old site, financetransformation.virginia.edu, will remain live while we finalize migrating the content. Read more about the new site.
5. The FST Team is currently building out the version of the Workday Financials tenant that we'll test end-to-end beginning September 1 to get us ready for go-live on July 1, 2022. Read more about the testing phase of FST.
The R&A Focus Group will meet bi-weekly for one hour
over the next few months to analyze high-priority financial reports that the
R&A Team has developed. The initial list of a dozen or so are ones that are
designed to replace the most frequently used UBI finance reports.
The Focus Group will spend 30 minutes of each meeting
examining if a report meets requirements, and if not, what could be changed so
that it does meet requirements. The other 30 minutes will be devoted to
reviewing decisions and changes to a report discussed in a prior session,
usually with a demo of changes made.
It is important to note that this is just a preliminary
group to make sure the R&A Team is headed in the right direction, and to identify
change management and training opportunities related to reporting. The Focus
Group is not meant to be a fully-fledged testing of reports and only has a few
members to be more effective, manageable, and participatory. Eventually, more
people will be involved in end-user testing.
Make sure to keep an eye on this space for future updates
related to the R&A Focus Group.
Some design differences in the way the UFM model and the BBA reports treat some items have always been present. For example, the Sources/Uses format moves F&A expenses up to offset Grants & Contracts revenue rather than showing it as an expense. When it comes to Adaptive Planning and UBI, the differences come down to how the systems are used and when they are updated.
Adaptive Planning (how it is currently configured for Fiscal Year 2022) should be used for comparing actuals to the Board of Visitors approved budget or Working Budget. Actuals are loaded into the system after each month-end close (usually the 2nd or 3rd of the following month).
UBI, however, should be used for budgets to actuals (BBA) reporting when comparing actuals to updated info in BudgetUVA throughout the month. Actuals and budget information are updated nightly. Since UBI is the only system that includes all centrally approved budget adjustments to institutionally owned awards (SG, LG, FI, SU, EI, DI, LC), the BBA report is considered the correct budget to actuals report for institutionally owned awards for FY22. The budgets in the BBA reflect the Board of Visitors approved budget plus all centrally approved adjustments to institutional awards (via BudgetUVA), so it is the correct base budget for all institutionally owned awards.
Though these systems have different uses, if schools/units are updating their Working Budget in Adaptive to coincide with BudgetUVA updates, the budget in both systems should typically be in sync. Since Adaptive reports for FY22 do not automatically include adjustments, including centrally approved budget adjustments to institutionally owned awards, it is incumbent on units who wish to report out of the Adaptive working budget to ensure their working budget balances to the budget totals reflected in the BBA for all awards.
Please note, now that the University is using Adaptive for
the budget process, some minor differences may come up because of challenges in
keeping mapping rules and code in sync between Adaptive and UBI.
Currently, the focus is on getting Adaptive ready to integrate with Workday
Financials.
CI Tips brought to you by the Continuous Improvement Committee and CI-minded UVAFinance FST Intern turned part-time employee, Jack Sherwood
from Jack Sherwood and Kriszti Kiss
In the coming months of a hybrid working environment, new challenges will present themselves as some folks return to the office while others remain remote. The focus of this post is to combat the disruptions that will occur in meetings.The FST Change Management Workstream is happy to welcome Jack Sherwood as an official part-time team member for the remainder of the project. Sherwood, currently a fourth-year at UVA, started as an intern for the Change Management team earlier this summer.“Given my positive experiences in performance improvement and industrial organization,” Sherwood explains, “an opportunity to work on a change management team was one I could not pass up: I was looking for a job that offered to teach me new skills while also allowing me to showcase my abilities, and this job presented itself as the perfect combination of the two.”
Throughout the summer, Sherwood has helped the Change Management team with deepening engagement for the second round of Customer Confirmation Sessions, has worked on the Enterprise Data Catalog, and has collaborated with other team members to teach Root Cause Analysis and Change Management Lean Labs. He looks forward to taking on even more responsibilities now that he is staying with the project.
“I have found this experience to be very gratifying,” he says. “Not only is it satisfying to see a project of this scale successfully move closer to the finish line, but I also feel as though I am making a positive contribution to the University that I call home. I have enjoyed every moment of this project and every colleague I have worked with. This is a tight-knit group that has fun while getting the job done.”
Outside of work, and in addition to being a part-time UVA student, Sherwood spends his time traveling, fly-fishing, and drumming. This summer he has focused on drumming as he's in a new Charlottesville-based band called First Lady. Sherwood converted from guitar to drums for this band, which performs at various student-populated venues, and finds the new instrument to be “very loud but even more empowering.”