Workday Implementation
Announcements
New students enrolling at Aims for Fall 2023 can access their New Student Onboarding tasks in Workday by going to myAims Student and clicking the red Workday button.
- Faculty, staff and student employees will use Workday to update personal information, request leave, select benefits and more.
- Once Student Implementation is complete in 2023, every Aims employee and current and prospective student will use the Aims' Workday system.
Students aren't going to set up a Workday account. It is an app within Okta that they will have access to once they activate their Okta account. When a student is admitted, we tell them they'll be getting an email from Okta for account activation. Once they activate Okta, they'll have access to Workday.
The headings below contain "how to" resources for each department. Students may also get help with any Workday questions or issues by submitting a ticket via the IT Help Desk (select "IT" and then "Workday".)
Student section links:
During implementation, Aims team members directly involved in the implementation project will often have limited availability for emails. Delayed responses are to be expected and will likely come before 8 a.m. or after 5 p.m. Team members will have a "Workday Team" image appear in their email signature to help notify campus of their limited availability.
Key personnel leading the Workday Student implementation project:
| Name | Aims Title | Workday Role |
|---|---|---|
| Andria Brabo | Executive Director, IT Administrative Services | Project Manager, Workday |
| Kelley Christman | Registar | Stream Lead, Records, Admissions & Enrollment Processing |
| Stacy Sharp | Assistant Registrar | Stream Lead, Records, Admissions & Enrollment Processing |
| Dana Kohler | Executive Director, Enrollment Management | Stream Lead, Admissions |
| Tori Ives-Edwardson | Coordinator, Enrollment Management | Stream Lead, Recruiting |
| Lesli Bicknell | Assistant Director, Pathway Advising | Stream Lead, Pathway Advising |
| Chris Peterson | Executive Director, Financial Aid | Stream Lead, Financial Aid |
| Bob Sandstrom | Functional Analyst III | Student Lead & Financial Aid Lead |
| Mary Pleiss | Assistant Director, Financial Aid | Stream Lead, Financial Aid |
| Terry Anderson | Dean, Allied Health & Wellness | Stream Lead, Academic Affairs |
| Jennifer Gilsdorf | Accountant II | Stream Lead, Student Financials/Cashiers |
| Bex Herman | Program Director, SAIL | Change Management Co-Lead |
Before Workday, Aims used Banner as its ERP provider for 22 years. Over the last few years, Banner upgrades became costly and failed to meet Aims' growing institutional technology needs. When it was time to renew the contract with Banner, the opportunity arose to explore other ERP options for Aims.
April 2016-December 2018
- College-Wide Banner Business Process Review/Redesign (BPR) on Financial Services, Human Resources, Accounts Receivable, Travel and Expense, Student (preliminary work)
August-December 2018
- IT begins internal discovery process
- IT meets with potential software vendors, other schools switching ERPs, implementation partners, project management partners, change management partners
- Student Engagement, Inclusion, and Success (SEIS) commissions a Process Redesign Reimagine (PRR) assessment of Banner Student
- Aims' contract with Ellucian enters renewal period
January-February 2019
- Discovery process of ERP options begins with Cabinet’s support
- Discovery and Readiness Team (DART) committee is formed
- Aims partners with BerryDunn to provide institutional change exploration and readiness evaluation
March-April 2019
- Aims hosts well-attended ERP Vendor discovery demonstrations from three vendors
- Second-round institutional change readiness survey is conducted
July-August 2019
- DART invites two vendors to return for a deeper dive into product information
- DART unanimously votes to move to Workday
- Cabinet supports move to Workday
- Workday contract is signed
- Implementation Team begins Workday preparation
Workday Student Implementation Progress Update
Workday-Student is a large and complex ERP implementation project (Enterprise Resource Planning refers to a type of software that organizations use to manage day-to-day business activities, in this instance, recruiting, admissions, onboarding, student registration and records, advising, academic planning, financial aid, student financials, etc.), and as a result it will be rolled out in four phases, called “Go-Live” dates. Below are the dates and a list of processes included in each phase:
- Go-Live #1 - Fall 2022; primarily Recruiting & Admissions processes, some Registration, Records, and Curriculum processes, some Financial Aid processes
- Go-Live #2 - Spring 2023; most processes within Registration, Advising, Financial Aid, and Student Financials
- Go-Live #3 - Fall 2023; Disbursement, Student Refunds, etc.
- Go-Live #4 - Fall 2023; Grading, Graduation, End-of-Term Processing, etc.
We are working hard to create robust operations manuals, trainings, videos, and a strong infrastructure to support questions, concerns, and troubleshooting issues for each phase of the project rollout. If you have any questions or concerns, please submit them through the Web Help Desk Ticket Submission - just select “IT” from the dropdown menu, and then "Workday".
Job Aids & Resources
Aims engagement, commitment and effort on the project has been excellent. The team has handled the implementation exceptionally well. It’s very clear that Aims has a culture for caring about people and doing things for them to make sure they are taken care of.
--Workday Engagement Lead
There were five implementation stages that lead up to the July 1, 2020 launch of Aims’ HR/HCM, Finance and Payroll systems on Workday. The Workday Student Implementation Team is following the same implementation stages leading up to the multiple 2022 - 2023 milestones. The Aims Workday Implementation Team continues to provide outstanding commitment and collaboration toward successful completion of the project in Fall 2023.
The objectives of the Plan stage are to confirm the project scope, initiate project activities, and establish project management processes and controls. The project goals, plan, timeline, milestones, deliverables, resources, and responsibilities are drafted and reviewed in this stage. Project work streams are initiated to align on approach, resources, and schedules. The stage starts with a project orientation meeting to begin the project planning activities and includes a project kick-off with the extended customer project team at the end of the stage to review the overall project, including a draft of the plan, timelines and resources.
The Architect stage allows Aims and Workday project team members to find a common understanding of Aims' business needs and to analyze how Workday will be deployed to meet those needs. During this stage, Workday concepts and functions will be reviewed and design decisions gathered. This stage focuses on understanding business requirements and how Workday can be configured to satisfy the business requirements.
The objective of the Configure and Prototype stage is to complete the configuration of the Workday application based on the specifications gathered in the Architect stage. In this stage, all application configurations are completed in Workday. Data conversions for both configuration data (i.e., setup, organizations, business processes) and operational data (i.e., workers, customers) are executed. Integration and report development are completed, and the tenant is prepared for the Test stage.
The Test stage ensures the configured Workday system sufficiently meets the needs of Aims' business. Each test effort has a different set of conditions and purpose. The agreed-upon exit criteria for each test effort must be met to move forward toward a go-live.
Once Aims has met all of the exit criteria for the Test stage, they are ready to move on to the Deploy stage, where they will go live on Workday in a production environment using all of the features and integrations configured and tested during previous stages.