FST Update September 23, 2021

 

Want to listen to this update instead of reading it? Click here to tune into the WFST Broadcast!

No time to read paragraphs? Check out "Five Things to Know about WFST"

FDM Mapping Update

Some of the FDM mappers in schools and units have begun submitting initial files from their areas for the FST Team to run through the mapping tool. The mapping process is intended to be iterative, and incomplete files are welcomed.  The mapping process continues from now through March of 2022, so these early cycles are great to get a sense of how things are going before we get too far down the road.

Read more on FDM Mapping.

Reporting & Analytics Focus Group

The Reporting and Analytics team and focus group have also been busy. In this week’s blog digest, you can read an update from Linda Leshowitz, a member of our training team and longtime UBI trainer, who’s been working with the focus group. Linda gives insight into the pros and cons of both UBI reporting and Workday Financials reporting. The primary charge of the focus group is to get the basic transactional reports required in Workday Financials in a state where they’re useful and value-added by the time we go live in July of 2022. 

Read the update here.

Oracle Focus Groups Share Feedback

We had about 75 employees across Grounds participate in one of the two focus group sessions.  We heard a lot of great feedback, but there were some things that came up repeatedly, like the timing and delivery methods of training, keeping training materials accurate and up to date, and of course trainers who are familiar with both current state and future processes.

Read more of the groups' observations here. 

Testing Tracker

Although the end to end testing phase of Workday Financials officially began with the onset of September, most of the actual end to end testing processes will be in full swing as of October. The team is going to release a testing calendar soon.  

Full update here.

PaymentWorks New Launch Date: October 18

New supplier management software PaymentWorks goes live on October 18, 2021. This is a change from the original go-live date of September 27. This new date will give us the necessary time to make sure the large volume of transactions between our bank and the system itself is moving smoothly. We had two really great demo/feedback sessions with almost 300 attendees this week. 

Read the full update and check out a plethora of resources here.

Five Things to Know about FST: September 24, 2021

 

1.  FDM Mapping is making progress.  Schools and units have submitted initial files for review.  This phase runs through March 2022.  Read more.

2.  The Oracle(s) have spoken:  Colleagues who were here for the Oracle implementation shared their wisdom and warnings for the Workday Financials implementation in focus groups sessions last week.  Read what they had to say.

3.  Testing Tracker Update:  End-to-End testing of Workday Financials is chugging along. Look for a testing calendar soon.  Read more on the blog.

4.  The PaymentWorks go-live date has been pushed back a bit.  The new date is October 18; these extra days give the team extra time to make sure things will run smoothly.  Read more and access resources.

5.  Reporting & Analytics Focus Group members are sorting out the differences between UBI reporting and Workday Financials reporting.  Read an update from Linda Leshowitz here.

Consulting the Oracle: Employees Share Insights from Previous Implementation

Approximately 75 employees from across Grounds recently participated in two focus group sessions about the Oracle implementation 20 years ago. FST team members listened to gather insights from participants' experiences that can help the project team anticipate user needs with the Workday Financials implementation.

Participants answered questions about things they liked and didn't like about the process to switch to Oracle, as well as specifically the one thing they would have changed about the implementation. Several themes emerged from the conversations. Training came up repeatedly, focusing on timing and ease of access to information—being able to find the right resource when it's needed and ensuring it's the most up-to-date and accurate. Participants emphasized the importance of trainers being fluent in both current-state processes and how things will work in the new system. 

Another theme was access: users emphasized that they need to have the necessary permissions to interact with every part of a process that pertains to them being able to complete their work successfully. They provided feedback about the importance of knowing who to contact when mistakes inevitably occur and getting a resolution in a timely manner to reduce the steps to remedy situations after the fact. 

The FST team is grateful to participants for their time and willingness to share candid feedback.

 

 

PaymentWorks Launch Moved to October 18

New supplier management software PaymentWorks goes live on October 18, 2021.  This is a change from the original go-live date of September 27.  

This new date will give us the necessary time to make sure the large volume of transactions between our bank and the system itself is moving smoothly. We believe those few more days of testing will help us to ensure as few bumps in the road as possible when we do go live.

TSM will be open for first-time supplier registrations between Friday, September 24, and Thursday, September 30 at 5pm. Between October 4 and October 15, we will again close first-time registrations, but we can still process time-sensitive vendor registrations and individual payee registrations via vendors@virginia.edu if need be.

We had two really great demo/feedback sessions with almost 300 attendees this week.  If you missed them or want to review them, check out the recordings linked below, as well as the other resources we've put together to help with the transition to PaymentWorks (including training!).

RESOURCES:

PaymentWorks Informational One-pager

15-minute training video for departmental users via Workday Learning

Instructions to share with suppliers on registering with PaymentWorks

Video from PaymentWorks Engagement Session 9.21.21 / Video from PaymentWorks Engagement Session 9.23.21

FAQs from PaymentWorks Engagement Sessions

Questions?  Concerns?  We're happy to help!  Contact us at vendors@virginia.edu

Reminder: Open Enrollment is coming!

Open Enrollment Dates: October 4 - 15, 2021

Benefits Update

The UVA HR Open Enrollment website

 

is open! Learn more about benefits changes and key takeaways.


Employee Toolkit of Resources for Open Enrollment

UVA HR Open Enrollment Resources webpage has an array of resources available to help you evaluate your needs and understand the different benefits options. Learn more!

FDM Mapping Continues

Intrepid Foundation Data Model (FDM) mappers in the schools and units have begun submitting their areas' initial files. It's important to remember this process is intended to be iterative, continuing now through March 2022; the expectation is not that areas will complete their mapping in one fell swoop nor that things will be perfect. 

The FST team encourages mappers to submit files with portions of their mapping complete. Early cycles of the process enable participants to get used to how it works and provide opportunities to see how things look after the FST team runs files through the mapping tool. It's helpful to get that sense before getting too far down the road to ensure things will look and function as intended. 

Keep in mind, some large-scale changes can be automated. For example, if an area has a group of Oracle tasks that will be assignees in the FDM, those changes can be automated by the FDM team using the mapping tool as opposed mappers manually making all of those changes.  

The FDM team is currently prioritizing engagement through the collaborative pods. For questions or to submit requests for new worktags, contact FDMMapping@virginia.edu. The team is doing their best to respond to traffic through that inbox in a timely fashion. The FDM Resource Page in the online Community is a hub of files and information needed for mapping, including the instructions/template to request new worktags.  

UVA Night Tour – Walk in the Dark

The UVA Security and General Safety Committee is soliciting suggestions for its upcoming Fall Night Tour to be held in mid-October. During the Night Tour, committee members walk areas around Grounds in darkness to assess physical safety conditions, particularly lighting, pathways, crosswalks, and emergency phones; and physical infrastructure hazards, such as sidewalks, stairs, or railings.

Please fill out this short survey where we will be collecting all suggestions and feedback on venues and/or issues to examine. The survey also provides the opportunity to upload photographs, maps, or diagrams. Responses to the survey will be accepted through Sunday, October 3rd.

More information about the Security and General Safety Committee, including contact information, can be found here.

https://safetyandsecurity.virginia.edu/night-tour-walk-dark

If you have additional questions about this survey, please contact Tim Eckert, Office Manager and Special Assistant to the Chief of Police & AVP, Department of Safety & Security, at tre8g@virginia.edu.

Testing Tracker Update: September 23, 2021

 

Welcome to our first real update of the Testing Tracker!

Although the end-to-end testing phase of Workday Financials officially began with the onset of September, most of the actual end-to-end testing processes will be in full swing as of October. 

The team is going to release a testing calendar, and we’re preparing to share information with our Change Leaders on the possibility of pop up focus groups that might occur during the testing phase – if you’re a Change Leader, we’ll have more clarity on that during the October Advisory Group meeting.

Continuous Improvement Corner: UVAFinance Website

Contributed by Meredith Dixon

By now you’ve heard about the new UVAFinance website that is being developed, moving us towards a long-hoped-for goal. 

The Past Process

Even though we are all UVAFinance, our information has been spread across many different websites, making it difficult for our customers (UVA employees - including our UVAFinance colleagues, suppliers, students, etc) to find the information that they need. Sometimes there is important information that needs to be seen, but it’s posted on a page that isn’t frequently visited, so a lot of people are missing out. And sometimes our work crosses into other areas that are not technically UVAFinance, which makes it even more complicated.

The Process Improvement

We have used a different structure in the new site than before: one that is designed to help guide our customers to what they need. Rather than long pages of text, users will find that if there is a process to be followed, it will be in a process page, even if that process crosses areas or goes outside what we consider to be Finance. The people who can help the user, even if they cross areas, will be displayed in the context of the information, rather than having to look through entire listings of people, hoping to find a name. And important news can be right on the front of the UVAFinance page, and we all only need to look in one place to find it! (Don’t forget that this also means we don’t have to remember where in the world we saw that important news, weeks after we read it - we’ll know where to go if we need to revisit it.)

The end result will be a site that will help all of us and our customers. We’ll be able to easily access what we need to know about UVAFinance and get important information to our end users, and our customers will be able to find what they need to know (and what we need them to know!) quickly.

Visit the new website here.  

You can reach the Continuous Improvement Team here:  uvafinance_ci@virginia.edu 
 

 

Three Adorable New Boys Join OFP&A Family

The Office of Financial Planning & Analysis has been popular with the stork over the past year or so, with three baby boys joining the families of team members Devin Foster, Rick Johnson, and Andrew McGehee.

Feast your eyes on the baby cuteness!

Dax Carter Foster, born 2/20/20

Judah Edward Johnson, born 2/28/21

Jacob Crosby McGehee, born 5/19/21

Salesforce Tip Corner

Handy recap of finance units/activities now conducting some or all of their work in Salesforce and the email addresses to use:

• Admin Services - vpf-support@virginia.edu
• Business Intelligence - vpf-bireporting@virginia.edu
• Financial Planning & Analysis - budget@virginia.edu
• Financial Operations Payment Card - uva_payment_card_svc@virginia.edu
• Financial Reporting - vpf-finopsreporting@virginia.edu
• PSDS Business Solutions - prs-sci@virginia.edu
• PSDS Buy Pay - pur-paya@virginia.edu
• PSDS Payables - prs-expense@virginia.edu
• PSDS Payables Invoices - invoices@virginia.edu
• PSDS Payables Payments - payments@virginia.edu
• PSDS Payables Vendors - vendors@virginia.edu
• PSDS Supplier Diversity - supplierdiversity@virginia.edu
• PSDS Travel - travel@virginia.edu
• PSDS Travel Card - card@virginia.edu
• Payroll - vpf-payroll-tra@virginia.edu
• System Support - vpf-systemsupport@virginia.edu
• Treasury Management - treasury@virginia.edu
• Tuition & Fees Feedback - respond_uva_tuition@virginia.edu

Tip for handling cases together with other Finance units

This week we ran into a scenario where emails from one case were being forwarded to another team's email list, which also were going into Salesforce. Once other service units are in SF with us, there is no need to forward cases like this, as SF is designed to enable this collaboration in other ways:

• Just need input from another team/colleague in Salesforce? Use a Chatter post on the Case by tagging the other team member or queue.
• Need somebody else to take over the case, work, and resolve it? Reassign the case to another individual or queue. The history on the case will track where it started and went. This is the best way to collaborate on cases and escalate or hand-off cases to those who can really complete the request.

The case collaboration described above is really what Salesforce is built for, and is the best way to efficiently manage work and solve customer problems faster.

Caste Book Discussion for September 23

For the Caste book discussion this week, on September 23 at 4:30 (back to a later time—join us for part or all of the time scheduled – don’t worry if you have to come late or leave early) we will be discussing

Caste Part Six: Backlash.

Even if you have not joined us for prior discussions or haven’t read the book, please join us for these very thought-provoking conversations.

Please let Patty Marbury know if you have any questions, and as always, invite your friends and colleagues to participate in our discussions.  Need the Zoom link?

Following are some questions to consider as you read and review the content (after the jump)

Dollars make sense: OFP&A begins rounding allocations

Beginning fiscal year 2023, the Office of Financial Planning & Analysis is rounding allocations to the nearest whole dollar.  The purpose of the change is to make it easier to reconcile your funds 

As the FY2023 budget process begins, watch for more information!

Related story:  FY2023 Budget Kickoff Scheduled

Budget Kickoff

 It's that time of year again!  

The Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost and the Office of Financial Planning & Analysis are preparing to officially kick off the FY2023 budget process on Friday, October 15.

The kickoff meeting is designed to convey detailed budget information on timeline, process, assumptions, budget requests, and resources available to you during the budget development process.  Bill Ashby and Adam Daniel will provide a high-level overview of the fiscal environment, expectations, and messages from the COO and Provost's offices.  

Invitations have been sent and RSVPs are due by Wednesday, October 13.  Contact OFP&A at budget@virginia.edu if you have questions or concerns.

FST RAPID Decision Updates

On a fast-paced project like Finance Transformation, decisions need to be made quickly but must also receive thorough consideration. Here's a look at what's going on with current topics under discussion: 

• Expenditure Credit: UVA will leverage ad hoc bank transactions to record expenditure credit deposits against their original spend categories. This decision is currently awaiting formal sign-off. You can find out more information about this decision here. 
• Salary Certification: UVA will transition from effort reporting to salary certification. The University will adopt and integrate a third-party solution known as Huron Employee Compensation Compliance (ECC) to meet salary certification requirements. You can read more about this decision here. 
• Workflow Controls & Approvals: UVA financial leadership would like to move away from the University's reliance on detailed post-transaction reconciliation and move towards front-end, real-time transaction approvals. The goal of Workflow Controls & Approvals is to enhance internal controls that facilitate "getting it right the first time." The Functional team is working with a third-party organization to provide a risk assessment and suggestions for building an enterprise risk management framework. The Functional team will finalize an approach based on guidance from this third-party organization and will share recommendations with stakeholders. 
• Intercompany Transactions: Many transactions occur among UPG, Medical Center, and the School of Medicine on a routine basis. FST will transform these transactions to align with leading practice and accounting rules. The FST team has collaborated with these groups to identify processes that need to be transformed. They are working to design future-state processes and to socialize those new processes to people impacted by the change. Multiple meetings have taken place to confirm current state activity and outline considerations and issues for future-state. The next step is to present findings to the FST Leadership Council. 
• Improving Fund Ownership Visibility: The project team is considering whether or not UVA should move away from using budgetary spending authority and instead base spending authority at the major business unit level on fund balance. There are many benefits to making this change, including enabling expendable fund balance reporting, clear ownership of funds, eliminating significant amounts of tracking outside of systems records, reducing the risk of errors, and increased staff capacity. You can read more about these benefits here. 

For more information on decisions, check out the FST Decision Log.

FST Change Readiness Assessment Closed on Sept. 21

Data collection for the third instance of FST's Change Readiness Assessment (CRA) ended this week. We hope we heard from you as part of it. 

The CRA's goal is to get a sense of how ready people are feeling for the changes to come related to finance transformation. Project team members are analyzing the data now, identifying trends and looking for areas where additional stakeholder engagement may be needed to ensure people feel confident they have what they need to be successful as the project moves forward. 

Next steps include sharing findings with FST governance groups and providing insights to Change Leaders to inform engagement activities in their areas as we get closer to go-live with Workday Financials on July 1, 2022. Remember, Workday is only part of this transformation. Ongoing continuous improvement, implementation of Adaptive Planning, and enhanced reporting and analytics are other facets of the project. 

Additional iterations of the CRA will occur in the coming months ahead of Workday go-live as a way for the change management part of the FST team to stay informed about stakeholders readiness for what's to come. 

Reporting & Analytics Focus Groups: Sifting through the pros and cons

The Reporting & Analytics team has shared lots of updates in the blog and with the FST governance groups (see past blog pieces here), and by now you've probably heard of the Reporting & Analytics focus group that has been meeting to review and provide feedback on reports.

Just to recap, the primary charge of the focus group is:

• to  make sure Workday Financials reports meet user requirements
• to share user perspectives with the Reporting & Analytics team
• to understand the differences that can be expected between UBI and Workday

We caught up with Linda Leshowitz, who, in addition to being involved with the focus groups, is also a UBI trainer and a member of the FST training team, and encouraged her to expand on what the focus group's activities mean for users at large.

Leshowitz says the team's priority is to get the basic transactional reports required in Workday Financials in a state where they're useful and add value.  

The cross-section of users in the focus group means that perspectives are wide, yet the group's overall size is small enough to maintain good dialogue. 

"At this point, we've had UBI for over five years, and people have become very accustomed to it.  They want to make sure what they can do in UBI can be done in Workday Financials -- or at least something similar to it," says Leshowitz.

Leshowitz echoes what Reporting & Analytics Team Lead Mark Anderson has mentioned before in governance groups, that when users compare reporting in UBI and Workday, there are some big differences, and both platforms have their strengths and weaknesses.

Workday, Leshowitz points out, offers real-time data in one system, with one place where you can do your tasks, approvals, and reports.  Within Workday, users also have the ability to drill down into specific items to get details regarding a transaction, something that can't be done in UBI.  On the other hand, UBI is a business intelligence platform, a highly customizable one at that. 

 "The things you need are going to be available to you in Workday," says Leshowitz, "we all just need to recognize that it won't look exactly the same or be accessed the same."

"The focus group has met only three times," she continues, "and already I think it's been an excellent group, candid with feedback, open-minded, and sharing with us the information we need to understand what's going to make the reports useful for them."

Return to Carruthers: Some Things to Know

Over the past couple of weeks, many of your UVAFinance colleagues have been trickling back into Carruthers Hall, whether on a fully in-person basis, a hybrid schedule, or just to pick up more of their supplies as they plan to stay remote.

If you've been physically in the office lately, then you know how good and, at the same time,  weird it is to be in the building.  As much as it was a transition for us to be wholly remote, it will be another time of transition for us to be a mix of remote/hybrid/in-person.

Here are a few guidelines from Scott Adams, Director of Business Services, to help make the transition smoother: 

• Don't forget to fill out your remote agreement.  This should've come as a DocuSign from Ann Paxton.  If you can't locate it in your inbox, email vpf-support@virginia.edu for assistance.
• Be patient as the transition occurs.  The Business Services team is doing its best to get you what you need to transition, from monitors to files and beyond. Remember that it takes time to create a new workplace (or, more properly, workplaces, since many of us are functioning in more than one)
• Keep in mind there have been changes in Carruthers you might not have on your radar, like the fact that you must use your badge to get in and out of the building (during working hours, you don't need your code).  This makes all of us a little bit safer, especially when there will be days very few people will be in the building. 
• If you're going mostly remote, try to remove your personal items by October 1.  Tag your files and we'll move them to a central location fur further work with Records Management processes.
• All hoteling stations within Carruthers will be full workstations, but they won't be fully in place until the end of the year.  We'll use FM Interact to manage these spaces. 
• All of our meeting rooms are Zoom Rooms.  This is really handy for those meetings where you have some attendees Zooming and some in person.  Remember that the process for these meetings is different; you need to invite the room to the meeting.  If you need some training on this, contact vpf-support@virginia.edu  

And bonus notes from Carrie Crosby at the Front Desk:

• Please remember to keep track of any conference rooms you may have booked for hybrid Zoom meetings. It is understandable that you may not know how many attendees will attend in person if any, but due to these uncertainties, we are seeing our conference rooms being booked, but not actually used (in some cases). If you reserve a conference room, but later find out that all attendees will be virtual, please remember to remove the reservation from the room calendar (by removing the room as an attendee or let Stacey, Ann, or Carrie know and we can manually remove the room from the calendar). Additionally, if you reserve both large conference rooms (Carr-1 & Carr-2), but later find out that you will not have a large number of attendees, please remove the UNUSED room from the invitation so that others may have access to the room.
• It's more important than ever to have your badge on hand; if you need a lanyard or badge reel, let Carrie or Ann know!

See you soon, whether it's in person or just zooming by!

Hoos Seen This: JJ Davis' 3 Things

At the end of August, EVP-COO J.J. Davis kicked off "3 Things from J. J. Davis, a weekly round up of three quick things that caught her attention.   You can see each week's 3 Things by following J. J. on Twitter @JJDavisUVA or by visiting https://3things.evp-coo.virginia.edu/  

Last week, 2 out of 3 of J.J.'s things were from UVAFinance!  If you have something you think J.J. might like to know, please email your friendly neighborhood communicator at bv8h@virginia.edu, and thanks!

UVAFinance awarded Inclusive Excellence grants

UVAFinance was the recipient of two Inclusive Excellence Grants of $10,000 each from UVA’s Division for Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion. 

IE Grant #1: UVAFinance Training

The first was to provide matching funds for two DEI workshops offered to all UVAFinance staff during Summer 2021. The two classes were Bigger than Racism and Allies for Racial Equity, both facilitated by The Racial Equity Group. Ongoing DEI training is one of the action items in our submitted Inclusive Excellence Plan, with a goal of 100% completion. For these two classes offered this year, 85% of UVAFinance staff completed the first workshop and over 90% completed the second. Please contact Patty Marbury (pam5w@virginia.edu) with questions about this grant.

IE Grant #2:  Supplier Diversity Workshops

The second IE grant is for training and engagement related to Supplier Diversity at UVA. The $10,000 will go toward the development and delivery of four workshops. 

First is a UVA Purchasers On-Grounds Roadshow. This workshop will tour the University to educate our 2000 purchasers about procurement/diversity topics, including:

• Virginia’s Small, Women, and Minority-owned procurement program (SWaM) 
• our commitment to meeting the goals of that program and how departments can help
• purchasing guidelines
• purchasing ethics
• an overview of procurement services that departments can request to assist them in diversifying spend.

The second workshop will help educate suppliers on how to do business with UVA, specifically focusing on the areas of academic and construction procurement. A major element to this workshop is that it will be held off-site in partnership with community organizations such as The Center for Community Partnerships, The Minority Business Alliance, and The Jefferson Center to name a few. 

The third and fourth workshops are construction-related, they are Bonding 101 and How to Prepare a Winning Proposal. Please contact Lorie Strother (ljs8n@virginia.edu) with questions about this grant.

New on Finance Matters: Generation Z in the Workforce

There are now FIVE generations in our workforce, ranging from our Traditionalists in their 70s to the newest members, Gen Z, in their early twenties. (And all the Millenials cheer, because they're no longer the babies!) 

Today we have UVAFinance's Jack Sherwood, a rising UVA 4th year and member of the FST project team, and Gen Z extraordinaire, for a discussion on how his generation participates in the workforce.

Resources Mentioned:

• Intergenerational Workforce discussion with Lisa Harris: https://everydaygrace.podbean.com/e/bridging-the-generation-gap-in-the-workplace-finance-matters/
• Info on Gen Z: https://www.purdueglobal.edu/education-partnerships/generational-workforce-differences-infographic/
• Read more about Jack Sherwood: https://uvafinance.blogspot.com/2021/08/jack-sherwood-joins-fst-change.html

LISTEN HERE!

Five Things to Know about FST: September 10, 2021

 

1.  Testing Launch:  September means the start of end-to-end testing for the Workday Financials Tenant.  We're launching a "Testing Tracker" in the blog to keep you up to date.

2.  Reporting & Analytics focus groups continue to meet to make sure Workday Financials reports are on track for go live.  Read more on the blog.

3. Decisions, decisions (and progress): PaymentWorks is going live, Optical Character Recognition already has gone live, questions about fund ownership visibility, and a decision on salary certification vs. effort reporting.

4.  The Training Team is logging business processes and mapping security roles to business roles, as well as gathering feedback from folks who helped implement Oracle.  

5.  Change Readiness Survey #3 is coming!  Feedback is important, so if you get a chance to fill out a Change Readiness Assessment next week, please do so.  Workday Financials goes live July 1, 2022.

FST Update September 10, 2021

 

Want to listen to this update instead of reading it? Click here to tune into the WFST Broadcast!

No time to read paragraphs? Check out "Five Things to Know about WFST"

Workday Financials Testing 

As of September 1, the FST team has begun the testing phase of the project, which will stretch until January 14 of next year. This testing is called end-to-end testing, where the team tries to break the system to find any issues to fix.  Following the end-to-end testing period, user experience review will begin in February, featuring a new version of the tenant that contains the adjustments found in end-to- end.  That round of testing will include a wider group of representatives from the University.

Starting in this week’s blog digest, we’ll have a regular “testing tracker” post in the blog to keep everyone up to date on testing.

Reporting & Analytics Focus Groups

A focus group of members from around Grounds has met a couple of times now to get the perspective of those who use reports on a daily basis.  The group reviews reports constructed in Workday Financials to make sure they fit the intended purpose and that they’re suitable and usable, and to understand the trade-offs between UBI and Workday functionality. Read more on the blog.

FST Decisions old and new

PaymentWorks goes live at the end of this month.  This system replaces Jaeggar in supplier management.  Read the full update here.   Procurement will continue to do lots of communication about this and is absolutely happy to answer questions, so please feel free to reach out to them with any concerns.

Procurement also recently launched optical character recognition for invoices.  The adoption of OCR means that they can process supplier invoices more quickly and accurately and not rely on manual entry. Read more about OCR on the blog.

The buyer team in Procurement is restructuring their approach to category management so that they can better meet UVA’s needs.  Read more about their continuous improvement approach.

 In RAPID news, there’s an interesting question being proposed on the budget side of things, which is “Should UVA move away from the use of budgetary spending authority and instead base spending authority at the major business unit level on fund balance?”  Basically, if we did move to “hard funding,” as a model like this is called, units would have the ability to report on fund available without having to wait for year-end settlement and carryforward calculations.  Read more about the particulars.

Other Decision News: Check out this blog piece about salary certification, a recent RAPID decision that should ease administrative burden on effort reporting.  Keep up to date on FST decisions on the FST Decision Log.

Training

Not only is the Training Team working on logging business processes and associated tasks to determine what kind of training will be needed for each, but also, they have been working on mapping security roles to business roles as well as hosting some focus group sessions with our longtime UVA colleagues who were here for the implementation of Oracle, 20 years ago.  Read more on training.

 

 

Introducing the Testing Tracker

 

For the FST project, September means one thing in particular, and it’s not pumpkin spice latte season.

It's TESTING!  

As of September 1, the FST team has begun the testing phase of the project, which will stretch until January 14 of next year. This testing is called end-to-end testing, where the team tries to break the system to find any issues to fix.  Following the end-to-end testing period, user experience testing will begin in February.  Read more about testing on the blog here.

We want to keep you up to date on what's going on with end-to-end testing (or, E2E, as you'll likely see it referred to), we’ll have a regular “testing tracker” post in the blog to keep everyone up to date on testing. 

Look for more on testing very soon!

Reporting & Analytics Focus Group Update

During this month's governance meetings, Mark Anderson shared some information on the recently formed Reporting & Analytics Focus Group. The group has met twice now to review and provide feedback on reports. 

The primary goals of the Focus Group are to collect the perspective of those who use reports on a daily basis, to review reports to make sure they meet requirements (and to find solutions if they do not meet requirements), and to understand the differences between UBI and WD functionality. 

If you'd like to be involved in the Focus Group, please send an email to financetransformation@virginia.edu. However, please note that this group is intentionally small at this time as it is just a preliminary group to make sure the R&A Team is headed in the right direction. 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 the end-user review. 

Salesforce Success Stories: Student Financial Services

 Three months into their journey with Salesforce, Student Financial Services staff are pleased with the way the tool empowers them to better serve students.  

Jenn Bari, who manages the SFS Contact Center, says SFS leaders had been using a homegrown system to track student email cases for many years.  The system worked, but the team needed something that could better connect communication between students and families, and also that could give the team better reporting so they could make data-driven decisions regarding staffing and services, instead of gut instincts. 

"We wanted a system that had all the information in one place," says Bari. 

"We were having to look in five different places for previous conversations and it was hard to get context on what had already been discussed with students.  From a continuous improvement mindset, we knew we needed something that served us better."

Frustrated with their homegrown system's limitations, Bari had asked for alternative recommendations from UVA's Cornerstone Program during one cohort year.  After researching the problem, the Cornerstone team recommended Salesforce as the best solution for SFS.  At that time, the department wasn't able to make the change.  

Fast forward to a few years later, UVAFinance made the decision to adopt Salesforce and suddenly the option was on the table. 

"When Steve Kimata surprised me one week with a meeting about Salesforce, I asked 'does this mean my dream is coming true?'" laughs Bari.  

Scott Adams, Jack Jensen, Meredith Dixon, and Andrew Sallans of UVAFinance's Finance Engagement team got to work with the SFS team, piggybacking on what they'd already done implementing Salesforce with several other departments within Finance.  It took the group two months of intense work and collaboration to hammer out the details and get the new system set up.   

Now, after three months of using Salesforce, Bari and her colleagues can confirm Salesforce is, in fact, the fulfillment of their continuous improvement wish.

"Having our ticketing system and all the associated emails in one place is pretty significant," says Financial Aid Application Analyst John Martin.  

"Salesforce keeps everything visible to us."

Bari agrees, adding that the whole team can more easily communicate with one another and with students and families because of that visibility.  She notes that Salesforce has been especially useful for frontline staff, who, when students contact them, can see everything that has transpired before with the student's case, easily giving them updates and demonstrating coordinated services. 

So are SFS's stakeholders noticing the same positive impact the SFS staff is?  Martin says based on anecdotal evidence so far, the answer is yes, and Bari says that the three months of data they've collected so far will soon illustrate the answer to that question more clearly.  She's excited to report out on the data and tease out the trends. 

One thing they can say for sure so far is that Salesforce has enabled them to quantify their workload in a way they hadn't been able to before.  Bari notes that in their first three months with Salesforce, SFS logged over 10 thousand cases. 

"And that's ten thousand cases that were not manually tracked on a spreadsheet," Martin qualifies. 

Bari says the next steps for SFS beyond their data reporting will be to integrate their phone system into Salesforce for an even more complete, transparent picture of their customer service. 

PaymentWorks Goes Live at the End of the Month

PaymentWorks was one of the main topics at this month's Fiscal Administrators meeting. The supplier onboarding and management system goes live with Oracle on September 27th, so the PaymentWorks team wanted to inform stakeholders of all upcoming changes due to the transition. 

September 10th is the last day for vendor registrations to be completed in Jaeggar. After this, there will be a one-week blackout during which new suppliers cannot register. If there is an urgent matter during this time, contact Supplier Management at vendors@virginia.edu. This blackout only affects registration of new suppliers; payments will still be processed to registered vendors. 

September 20th will be the soft launch of PaymentWorks. Login information and training materials will be distributed to prepare for the 27th. 

In the weeks following go-live, active suppliers (who will remain active throughout the entire process) will receive an invitation to register in PaymentWorks. Individuals will need to re-register in PaymentWorks to be paid. Departments should notify and invite individuals to re-register to allow them to take advantage of new ACH payments and to get paid faster. Also, it is important to note that suppliers and individuals will be responsible for their own registration in PaymentWorks. 

For more information, check out the PaymentWorks Frequently Asked Questions page. If you'd like to view a demo of the system, you can do so here. 

FST Change Readiness Assessment #3 - Coming Soon!

The latest iteration of the finance transformation Change Readiness Assessment (CRA3) will be sent out on Tuesday, September 14. Keep an eye on your inbox, and please respond if you are invited to participate. 

The assessment gauges how ready stakeholders feel based on where we are in the Finance Strategic Transformation (FST) project. There are no right or wrong answers; this tool helps the project team know how stakeholders are feeling to inform our communications, engagement, and training strategies. It also provides FST Change Leaders (a.k.a. Advisory Group members) a clear sense of the needs and wants in their areas. 

Each iteration of the CRA allows us to capture a moment in time. Now, less than ten months away from Workday Financials go-live on July 1, 2022, people's sense of their level of preparedness undoubtedly is different then when assessed earlier. We just want a sense of where people are so we can better help them get where they need to be by the go-live date. 

The CRA3 survey closes on September 21, so please respond in a timely fashion if you receive it. Thank you for your ongoing efforts with finance transformation! 

New Terms Added to FST Glossary

New terms were recently added to the FST Glossary. These terms are primarily budget-related; for example, "revised budget," "sponsored award budget," and "working budget."

As a reminder, the FST Glossary is different from Workday Words in that it focuses on terms outside of Workday. The goal of the glossary is to strengthen UVA's shared understanding of terms central to UVAFinance, which will allow for more strategically informed decision-making. 

For definitions of the terms listed above, and to see the other recently added words, make sure to visit the Resources page on the FST website. 

Faculty Focus on Research: Salary Certification to Ease Administrative Burden

The FST Leadership Council recently signed off on a decision to transition UVA from effort reporting to salary certification as part of finance transformation’s continuous improvement efforts.

After the review of several options, including Workday’s Effort Certification, the recommendation is to implement Huron Employee Compensation Compliance (ECC) to replace our current Effort@ system. Since UVA will already implement Huron’s pre-award system (to replace ResearchUVA), we were able to negotiate a competitive price to include ECC as well. Final security-related sign-off is pending UVA ITS review of Huron security information gathered through a survey. The initial conversation between ITS security experts and Huron representatives went well, with ITS satisfied with the information Huron provided.

If all goes to plan, Huron ECC will be implemented after Workday Financials goes live on July 1, 2022. The first salary certification cycle using ECC would take place in the February-March 2023 timeframe. Huron ECC has been implemented at other universities, some of whom transitioned to Workday Financials, so integration between ECC and Workday should be seamless. The transition from effort to salary certification will align UVA with other R1 institutions that are looking at various ways to reduce administrative burden for both faculty and the institution, without compromising on compliance.

In late 2014, the federal government provided updated guidance on standards of documentation for salaries charged to federal awards and removed examples referencing effort certification. In 2015, UVA’s Organizational Excellence Office, Office of Sponsored Programs, and Financial Office of Compliance conducted focus groups with 110 faculty members in five schools. The major themes were consistent across the schools, and there was an overwhelming plea to improve Recon@UVA and Effort@UVA to reduce the associated burdens. In 2016, a consulting firm also evaluated ways to increase efficiency in federal compliance areas with a main focus on effort reporting. When the Finance Strategic Transformation project began, it seemed the opportune moment to act on these insights to better preserve the research time for UVA's esteemed faculty.

Office of Sponsored Programs Director of Post Award Urmila Bajaj, also the FST grants management co-lead, has long been an advocate of shifting to salary certification. Bajaj says, “We have heard from our faculty; they’re spending a lot more time on administrative tasks instead of research work. Federal funding is public money; we understand that we need to adhere to the federal compliance requirements. We can achieve that by creating an ethical and compliant environment, utilizing efficient systems supported by clear policies and guiding principles without overburdening the faculty and staff.  This transition to salary certification is one area where faculty and staff are going to appreciate UVA’s stand to reduce the admin burden drastically.”

While the change has not been formally announced yet, the FST team has communicated with departments, which have shared updates with their research faculty. Bajaj explains that faculty are enthusiastic about what they have heard so far.

Keep an eye on the blog for more information about this decision, and you can always stay up to date on project-related decisions with the FST Decision Log. 

Improving Fund Ownership Visibility: RAPID in progress

As a part of the RAPID decision-making process, the FST project team and Governance groups are considering the following question: 

Should UVA move away from the use of budgetary spending authority and instead base spending authority at the major business unit level on fund balance?

There are many benefits to making this move:

• Expendable fund balance reporting enabled – Units would have the ability to accurately report on funds available without needing to wait for yearend settlement and carryforward calculations. In combination with the FDM, anyone could run a trial balance on any combination of FDM worktags at any time. 
• 
  Clear ownership of funds – Consistent transfer of funds would make it clear “who owns the fund balance” and the "owner" of the fund will be able to see where the funds have been transferred and how much has been spent. 
•  Elimination of significant amounts of tracking outside of systems of record – Units could eliminate and/or streamline current tracking mechanisms (i.e. manual Excel spreadsheets).  
• Reduction in risks of errors – Through the elimination of the manual calculation of balances and the addition of robust real-time variance analysis capabilities. • 
• Increased staff capacity – This would allow more staff time to be devoted to analytical work rather than manual, tracking work.

In short, making this change would allow us to utilize Workday Financials to its fullest extent, reducing outside-of-the-system reporting and granting clear visibility into your funds.

Certainly, this change would require significant training:  the meaning of "budget" would be changed for many users, representing the unit's plans for the year instead of spending authority or funds available.  This would be a big adjustment for units that operate exclusively or nearly exclusively with spending authority.  It would reduce manual work done in shadow or supplemental systems but would require the movement of funds within the system. 

Contact Katie Walker at budget@virginia.edu with any thoughts/concerns you have about this decision, and watch for updates soon!

___________________________________________________________________

Read more about FST's decision-making structure

View the FST Decision Log

Procurement Aligns Buyer Staff to meet Customer Needs

When you think about central Procurement, you likely think of the place you go to get contracts signed.  That is definitely core to what the group does, but that isn't all they can do, and definitely not all they want to be able to do for their partners across UVA.

Procurement's Strategic Sourcing Director Alita Salley has been working with the buyer team to ensure that the structure and experience their team has aligns with UVA's goals and strategies.  With the realignment of some positions and additions of some staff, the team is moving into a model of Category Management.

As Salley explains it, there is a spectrum of activities that fall into the procurement realm, ranging from the thousands of day-to-day transactional purchases the team oversees, on to the more complex strategic sourcing that involves leveraging of purchasing power and strategy, and then the most complex activity, category management.

"Category management goes beyond the administrative functions of everyday purchasing and even the analysis and management involved with specific immediate and mid-term needs," explains Salley.  

She establishes category management as optimal management of a grouping of goods and services that have similar supply and usage characteristics.   The focus areas of Category Management illustrate its value: 

• Customer focus:  analyzing spend data and trends, building business cases and recommendations, developing strong partnerships with key influencers, creating comprehensive contract solutions, ensuring customers leverage contract resources, and maintaining an understanding of key value drivers.
• Product focus: understanding product offerings, defining categories and sub-category breakouts, discovering product alternatives, determining innovative or sustainable replacements.
• Supplier & Market focus: identifying primary suppliers and markets, overcoming barriers to entry, leveraging business growth opportunities, seeking opportunities to use SWaM businesses, establishing emergency response protocols for mission-essential vendors. 

As Procurement transitions out of a siloed structure into their new buyer team structure, stakeholders can expect to see more information on the departmental website and in regular UVAFinance communication channels (like the blog!).  Watch for more details soon!