New on Finance Matters: How to Navigate Change

Change Team Leader Angela Knobloch visits to discuss practical tips for managing yourself during times of change, including the dreaded "valley of despair."

Resources Mentioned:

• Gartner Report
• Engage for Change: Clarify Purpose, Honest Reflection, Assess Opportunities, Note progress, Grow Skills, Exhibit Flexibility

  

LISTEN HERE!

Optical Character Recognition for Invoices is live!

Procurement is happy to announce OCR (Optical Character Recognition) is now live. The
adoption of OCR means that we can process our supplier invoices faster, more accurately, and without manual entry.

Please be aware of a few changes that coincide with this implementation.

• This change only affects invoices submitted to vendor-invoices@virginia.edu or those mailed to PO Box 400197. If suppliers are submitting invoices through other departmental avenues, they should continue to follow their current procedure.
• PO Box Address Change: PO Box 400197 has been replaced by PO Box 3025, Scranton, PA on generated PO’s. Any invoices sent to this new address will be automatically uploaded, scanned into OCR, and electronically processed. Although it will speed up the processing time of mailed invoices, please be aware the suppliers may contact you to confirm the new address before processing. Please encourage all suppliers to email invoices to vendor-invoices@virginia.edu as we are transitioning away from accepting mailed invoices.
• Suppliers that are currently emailing their invoices do not need to change their process. OCR retrieves invoices sent through our email and processes them directly into Oracle.

Thank you for partnering with us as we implement this change, and don’t hesitate to email us at invoices@virginia.edu if you have any questions.

LSP Tip: Disconnect from a Wired or WiFi Connection

Submitted by your friendly neighborhood LSP Team

This is a follow-up tip to our Phishing review training.

An immediate step to take if you accidentally click on a link in a phishing email is to disconnect all access to the internet.

• Disconnect the ethernet cable if it is directly connected to your laptop.
• If there is an ethernet cable in a dock you are using, either:
• Disconnect the ethernet cable from the dock, or
• Unplug the USB-C cable from the dock to your laptop.
• Don't forget to disconnect your WiFi also. Many of your laptops are configured to automatically transition to a WiFi connection once disconnected from an ethernet cable.
• You can disconnect your WiFi by clicking on the WiFi symbol in your system tray. Then select Disconnect from your current network.
• You will see this symbol when you are disconnected from all internet access.
  

Connect your laptop after waiting a minute or so. Contact us at finhelp@virginia.edu, and also forward the suspicious email to abuse@virginia.edu. We will reach out and walk you through the steps of launching a virus/threat scan.

Open Enrollment is coming: Review Your Benefits Now

 UVA’s Benefits Open Enrollment for 2021 is October 4 – 15, 2021. 

NOW is your time to review and select benefits for next year. 

Learn what to expect this year, review your benefits use, mark your calendars for key dates, and register now for webinars and benefits presentations. Learn more.

 

Clara Tang on Internal Control and Her New Position as Senior Compliance Analyst

Clara and her children

“I missed finance!” Clara Tang said when asked what drew her to her current position in UVAFinance. She was previously working as a Senior Internal Auditor for the Health System, which she enjoyed, but she had very few opportunities to use her financial background. Clara, a CPA with almost nine years of experience in finance, says that her role as Senior Compliance Analyst perfectly combines finance with what she liked about being an auditor.

In this role, Clara will primarily work with a team to improve the University’s internal control of fiscal processes. “I will be looking at policy & procedure, business process, transactions, systems, and data analysis to assess our internal control under the COSO framework and to seek opportunities for improvement.” She is also responsible for facilitating risk assessment, transaction-level testing, and document compilation which will be forwarded to Augie Maurelli and President Ryan for final review and submission to the Agency for Risk Management and Internal Control Standards (ARMICS).

While the idea of internal control might seem a bit vague to some people, Clara knows it is essential to any business. “The internal control of an organization is like the immune system of a human body,” Clara explains. “And during a pandemic, there is no need to emphasize the importance of a healthy immune system, right? With a robust immune system, we don’t get sick as easily, and if we do, we recover faster. This is similar to what robust internal controls can provide: an improvement to operational efficiency and the furthering of our objectives to safeguard assets, an increase in the reliability of financial statements, the promotion of compliance, and the realization of other goals.”

Clara is already diving in and looking forward to all the challenges and opportunities ahead of her. “The AMRICS certification was changed this year," Clara says, providing an example of a current challenge she is working through. "I have been working closely with Lynn Galasso to figure out the new certification. She’s been sharing her extensive knowledge and experience with me without reservation!” In addition to working with Lynn, Clara is glad that her role will allow her to be involved with lots of business processes and teams.

She is particularly interested in what the implementation of Workday Financials means for internal control. “While making improvements to our business operations, we need to consider internal control throughout the design, testing, and implementation process,” she explains. “I’ve sat in a series of Workday meetings; it is impressive to see how much the team has already achieved. And I'm glad that I can contribute to the UVAFinance team by working with everyone to strengthen UVA’s internal control.”

Outside of work, Clara is kept busy by her nine-year-old daughter and seven-year-old son. When she does find time for herself, she enjoys reading and learning new things. She particularly loves non-fiction books about parenting, business, and data analysis.

Fall Fling: RSVP by September 10

 

PLEASE BE SURE to RSVP by the deadline so we may appropriately prepare for your attendance.
RSVP at vpfinance@virginia.edu

Join us on September 28, from 11 am to 1 pm, in Carruthers Hall's Lower North lot, as we eat, drink, and celebrate!

Upcoming Training from Records Information Management

 

Click here for Shared Drive Cleanup; Here's the link to the fall schedule

Training Update: Logging Business Processes

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: 

• The Timing of Training
• Role Mapping

UVA sets records in bond sales (again!)

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.

New Email Address for ExpenseUVA/ Chrome River Questions

As of August 3, expense@virginia.edu is the preferred email address for users to ask questions about ExpenseUVA, non-employee reimbursements, and other expense-related matters. 

When you only email expense@virginia.edu, rather than copying multiple Procurement email addresses, we are able to respond more quickly and efficiently to your concerns. Expense-related emails are worked as a team utilizing the Salesforce Customer Service platform. 

When your request is completed, you will automatically receive a brief satisfaction survey. We appreciate and value your feedback!

FST Update August 26, 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"

Foundation Data Model

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.

Five Things to Know about FST: August 26, 2021

 

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!

Adopting Adaptive: A Story in Three Parts

UVA's journey with Adaptive Planning, Workday's Planning & Budgeting tool, truly got underway in 2019 (which, in the current way that time passes, might feel like a decade ago) when Batten, Arts & Sciences, and the School of Education & Human Development undertook a pilot of the software system (then called Adaptive Insights). That pilot was Adaptive 1.0.

In the midst of the successful pilot, just as team lead Elissa Morton was reaching out to other schools and units to expand the testing phase, disruption in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic forced a shift in the timeline. Suddenly, in the summer of 2020, all schools and units were using Adaptive for FY21 budget revision and FY22 budget development. This was Adaptive 2.0.

Although their onboarding to Adaptive 2.0 was a little jarring, based as it was in a national emergency, users found the system to be flexible and full of potential. For the past year, people have been working in Adaptive 2.0 while the FST Adaptive Team has continued to shape Adaptive 3.0 to be ready to interact with Workday Financials at its go-live in July of 2022.

Adopting Adaptive has been an interesting process for UVA, and schools and units are both pleased with its capabilities so far while simultaneously yearning for the improvements the 3.0 version will bring.

We spoke to Charles Rush, Director of Finance and Budget at Batten, and Alicia Rudie, Senior Budget Analyst in the Office of the Dean in Arts & Sciences, to get a sense of how folks are feeling at this point in the implementation of Adaptive (let's call it Adaptive 2.5):

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

For now, the Adaptive Team continues its work revising the budget process and refining user stories for Adaptive 3.0. We'll continue to have regular updates on Adaptive in the blog, so keep your eyes peeled!

 

UVAFinance has a new doctor in the house

Devin Foster, DHA, MA

 Devin Foster, budget analyst in the Office of Financial Planning & Analysis, earned his Doctor of Healthcare Administration from the Virginia University of Lynchburg this August.  He is a part of the first cohort to graduate from their DHA program.

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."

Farther Down the Path: FDM Mapping Resources

Schools and units are now a couple weeks into Foundation Data Model (FDM) mapping. During this time, mappers have been acclimating to the process and familiarizing themselves with the available support resources. They've also been meeting with their pods, which are supportive peer groups. FST team members have been updating materials and creating new ones based on mappers' needs. This mapping process is intended to be iterative, so learning and process improvement will continue to happen along the way. 

Two recent additions of note to the FDM resource page in the online Community are the template to use to request new worktags and FDM FAQs.

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.