FST Update

 

Want to listen to this update instead of reading it?  Tune into our WFST Radio Broadcast!

Just need the high points?  Check out "Five Things to Know About FST"

Happy New
Year!  Here at the start of 2021, Finance
Strategic Transformation is not quite halfway through the configuration and
prototype phase.  We’ll be in this phase
until summer. (See the whole Phase 3 timeline on the FST website)

The team is
currently taking feedback from the Customer Confirmation Sessions we in late
2020, and using it to build another
iteration of UVA's workday tenant so we can have another round of confirmation
sessions later this spring.  See more info on the sessions here. 

There will be
lots of opportunities early this year and in the spring for stakeholders to get
a look at Workday Financials.  There are plans in progress to
deepen the engagement with the first round of Customer Confirmation sessions,
including some video content and other opportunities to broaden exposure to the
future state. For right now,
you can see the slides from all of the Customer Confirmation Sessions in the Online Community.

In FDM news, the
team’s goal is to have a solid structure on cost centers by the end of
February.  They’ll be doing outreach to
schools and units and socializing the structure, so that we can be sure all
units understand the FDM basics.  The
mapping tool for the FDM has been just slightly delayed but should be rolled
out soon, and FST governance groups, as well as the FST project team, are meeting
to review their cost center submissions.  Visit the FST Info Station for guidance on keeping up with FDM news.

There are six
major decisions being discussed in FST governance circles this month:  requisition user access, data warehousing and
trend reporting, per diem, Workflow control, receiving in Workday, and
discontinuation of WebWire.  Remember
that we keep track of these decisions in the FST decision log.

In all the decisions that surround our implementation of Workday Financials,
it’s easy to forget that Finance Strategic Transformation involves more than
just Workday.  FST is actually four parts;  Workday Financials, reporting &
analytics, Adaptive Planning, which is the budgeting tool, and probably most
importantly, Continuous Improvement.

The work the Finance Engagement team
is doing to put together a future-state service model for UVAFinance is a great example of continuous improvement activity.  The Finance Engagement team is
implementing Salesforce across UVAFinance departments to help make the customer
service experience more consistent for our stakeholders, and to provide us with
a more effective way to see problems as a whole, taking into account how
different departments touch the processes in question, rather than trying to
solve them in a siloed way. Read more about that here on the blog!

Another one of the four parts of Finance Strategic
Transformation is the implementation of Adaptive Planning, Workday’s budgeting
tool.  Last year, UVA
started using Adaptive for its budgeting process.  The Adaptive team is currently working with stakeholders on a budget process
redesign, pivoting from the 2.0 version of Adaptive Planning from last
year to the 3.0 version that will integrate with Workday Financials
and the new FDM.

Adaptive
Planning offers us so much more than the shadow systems and excel spreadsheets
we’ve become accustomed to for years. 
The team moves through the budget process redesign, they're focusing on
replacing the outdated and inefficient processes with a more streamlined
process that focuses on customer service and support of our end users’
needs.