Action Plan to Track & Solve Spend Issues

Contributed by Augie Maurelli

I'm writing today to share our action plan to address the backlog of current invoices and new purchase orders and requisitions that are currently weighing on many of your minds.  

Before I begin, though, I want to sincerely thank all of you in the schools and units for your ongoing support and cooperation as we make the necessary transitions that are a part of Finance Strategic Transformation.   It's been a long, complicated project, and at this stage, so much change can certainly wear on you and your team, and that's even before the bumps in the road that increase our stress levels.

The FST project team is working diligently to assist our operational units to address all of the issues resulting from cutover and conversion to Workday Financials and integrations with the system.  We have temporarily increased staffing assigned to these issues by over 50%.  The purchasing team is correcting converted purchase orders and clearing our backlog of requisitions in Workday.  The business solutions team continues to hammer away at our Marketplace integrations, while accounts payable is maneuvering a new platform to address invoice corrections, imports, and match exceptions, as well as assisting vendors.

All hands are on deck, working together to have the backlog and other operational constraints resolved by the end of September.  

There is no single root cause for the variety of complications we're facing.  Many of our processes are co-dependent, which means that solving problems involves investigation and manual interaction.  Please know that the spend team and the FST project team are making strides toward a steady state that will support you and your team as well as UVA's overall mission.  

We'll be keeping track of our progress as we focus on these issues.  Please visit this page on the UVAFinance website for updates.  On the page, you can see the current status of each situation along with next steps and projected dates when we have them.   While you're there, you'll see that as an end user, there are some things you can do to expedite your payment and/or purchase. 

Thank you again for your patience and partnership with us.