Sharing the Vision: Accounts Payable

 Contributed by Amanda Lockhart Davis

I've had the pleasure of being here at UVA since early December, digging into the nuts and bolts of my job as Director of Accounts Payable, getting to know my team, and learning about the needs of our customers.  

I joined the procurement team knowing we'd be working through the continuous improvements that come after a large system implementation and the associated business process changes. 

After these first few months of getting settled and identifying priorities, I wanted to share with you my vision for accounts payable moving forward: 

1. Organize  - Prioritize - Solution:  This is step one, and it's ongoing and overarching.  Our work has many interdependencies, and we're still sorting through many challenges post-go-live of Workday Financials.  With your input and the partnership of our internal teams, our team is prioritizing the issues that are causing the most pain to you and our vendors and getting solutions in place as quickly as possible.

2. Obtain the necessary education and training for myself and my team: For us to serve our partners across Grounds and our vendors in the community, we need to bring our best selves to our jobs.  To do that, we need to have all the skills and tools required to best do our jobs.  I've been focused on getting our team up to speed on the tools UVAFinance uses to manage customer issues and the systems we need access to in order to troubleshoot those issues.

3. Partner with our stakeholders and stay regularly engaged:  Who are our stakeholders?  If you're reading this, you are a stakeholder!  You're a finance partner at UVA!  We also serve our internal team in UVAFinance and vendors in the community.  Our team's priority is to provide excellent service to all, and that means we must listen to you continually and understand your needs.  This means you'll see us listening in at meetings and you'll be hearing from us in communication channels.  We're carefully monitoring the cases in AskFinance and working not only to solve individual cases but also to improve our processes based on the trends we see.

4.  Prepare my team for a successful year: I knew coming into this role that the team I was joining was amazing, and I've not been disappointed.  As this wonderful group's leader, I have the task of keeping their morale up and keeping their best interests at heart, and that's a goal I take seriously.  

I look forward to getting to know many more of you in the schools and units this spring.  Look for more from me in upcoming meetings and here in the UVAFinance blog!  As always, if you have questions or concerns about accounts payable, please reach out to us at askfinance@virginia.edu.