Finance Welcomes Scott Adams as Director of Business Services

With just over a week under his belt, Scott Adams is
settling into his new role in UVAFinance as the Director of Business Services. Adams
comes to Finance from the Batten School. He served as the Director of IT there
for eight years.

Scott Adams

What attracted Adams to join the UVAFinance team? According
to Adams, it was the vision for change and the commitment to make our customers
the center of business services. With the Finance Strategic Transformation
(FST) project now in Phase 3: Implementation, the transition also seemed
timely. Over the past several years in Batten, Adams led efforts to transform
the service experience for students, faculty, and staff. The aim was to fulfill
the needs and wants of those in Batten as well as having the school’s systems
continue to integrate well with systems across UVA.

“The emphasis was on providing service first and then having
strong data analytics behind it,” says Adams.

As part of this transformative experience, Adams oversaw
implementation of Salesforce, a platform that assists with case management.
UVAFinance plans to use the system as well, so Adams’ familiarity will be a
great asset.

His new role is an evolution of the Senior Director Finance and
Administration position, and Adams will oversee the Finance Local Support
Partner (LSP) group, administrative staff, and the development team. He will
also collaborate with Andrew Sallans, the new Finance Engagement Manager, on
the Salesforce implementation. Adams explains that continuous improvement is
always part if implementation of new systems, such as Salesforce and Workday.

Scott and his wife Grace ready to race. 

“The focus,” he says, “is creating good architecture. The
building process happens in layers once a strong foundation has been
established. There’s testing with small groups and working with key
stakeholders to gather feedback to inform potential changes. It’s important to
have the right champions in the room—people with broad institutional knowledge
who will ask challenging questions.”

Adams’ first priority will be the service model project and
Salesforce implementation to relieve pressure on Finance’s current ticketing
system. A benefit of Salesforce is that it’s more than just a case management
system.

“The system offers customers a connection to a knowledge
bank and FAQs to help them self-support,” Adams explains. “We get to determine
how training is attached to that and how information will flow in Salesforce.”

When not running major implementations at work, Adams also
enjoys running marathons, and previously ultramarathons, with his wife.

“We use them to explore,” he says. “Our plan is to run a
marathon in Berlin in September.”

He typically runs four or five marathons a year, having
completed about 120 so far.