FST: System Remediation

 

System remediation is the process of identifying and implementing changes that are required to non-Workday systems in order to successfully integrate with Workday Financials or consume new financial data following the transition from Oracle. Plainly said, system remediation refers to all the ways we’ll need to change current systems that work with Oracle (via UBI or ODS) so that they will work with Workday Financials.

What happens during system remediation? Let’s take a look!

STEP ONE: Identify the systems, large and small, that may be impacted by the implementation of Workday Financials.

First, we have to know what systems are out there across the UVA Community that will be affected by Workday Financials. 

Last fall, the FST team distributed a survey to over 320 recipients across 100 departments to gather information about finance-related systems across Grounds. The purpose of the survey was to develop an inventory of the systems (whether central or departmental) that may potentially be impacted by the Workday financials implementation.

Examples of systems that may potentially be impacted: 

• those that currently send AP invoices, cost transfers, or other transaction files to Oracle 
• those that extract volumes of financial data from the data warehouse or UBI
• those that use ODS to extract and load into local financial systems.

We shared the survey with the Advisory Group in April 2020 to ask for their help in ensuring that we have captured all potentially impacted systems. The survey results reside in the Online Community and have been updated continually. 

STEP TWO: Identify the key system impacts introduced by the transition from Oracle to Workday Financials.

Second, we need to get a solid idea of how current processes and structures will change as a part of the switch to Workday Financials.

As a part of the Architect phase, the FST team is designing the new business processes and technical architecture that will be implemented with Workday Financials, as well as identifying change impacts (including the key impacts to systems that may use, send, receive, or otherwise integrate with our current financial systems).

Emerging examples of system change impacts include:

Foundational Changes:

• COA is changing to the Financial Data Model (FDM)
• Org Hierarchy is changing to Cost Center Hierarchy
• New roles (formerly known as Oracle Responsibilities) will be created 

Technical Changes:

• Journal entry file format will change
• Supplier invoice file format will change
• The source for extracting financial transactions or financial data will change

Process Changes: 

• The ISP Transaction process will change
• The Journal upload process (EDI) will change

STEP THREE: Assess the system-specific impacts to non-Workday central and departmental systems, and begin planning the work to remediate those systems.

This is where we’ll blend the information from the survey with the new processes and architecture being designed as a part of the Workday implementation. 

Beginning with the Configure & Prototype phase and extending through the Test phase, the FST Team will provide system owners with the information needed to assess the impact of these changes on their systems, and will provide a variety of tools and resources to help support units as they move forward to make any required changes to their systems.

Examples of resources to be provided:

• Detailed documentation on the FDM and Cost Center hierarchy (as well as other hierarchies)
• Detailed file format and documentation for submitting and extracting transactions
• A COA to FDM Mapping Tool to convert legacy accounting strings
• An FDM Validator Tool to ensure that segments are valid

Project support will be delivered through an ongoing Community of Practice for impacted system owners and other key system contacts for sharing information, tools, documentation, and best practices for system remediation. The project will also provide support for navigating through the testing process and for obtaining information from the various project teams as needed, and a Community Hub or site where information will be published for direct and easy access. 

The System Remediation Community of Practice will convene this fall, using the contacts we identified through the finance system inventory. We expect and hope that this initial group will expand as we continue to capture additional departmental system information. 

Please review the supplemental system survey results on the Online Community and let us know if you see anything missing, or have additional information.

As we move into System Remediation, remember that the FST team has your back: You will not be alone during this process!