Late last year, The University of Akron set off on a strategic and transformational initiative to implement a cloud-based, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) technology called Workday to strengthen our growth and agility and to address some core challenges we experience every day. The first step in this process is to implement the Workday Platform for our HR and finance areas. Workday is a single platform, best-practice-designed technology that streamlines the core processes for UA to enable greater operational efficiency, as well as improved access to real-time data to elevate our strategic decision-making. With the implementation of the Workday Platform for our HR and finance areas, we will be discontinuing our use of PeopleSoft, our current ERP platform.
Why Workday? Workday will enable us to free up our time for value-added work and enhance your experience by providing an intuitive, easy-to-use self-service tool. With Workday Platform, you will have the ability to manage your HR and finance and to take action on personal and professional information, on demand. A few of the employee self-service (ESS) features include:
- 24x7 access over a secure network through a variety of devices including your mobile phone.
- online access to update or change personal information – address, payslips, banking, time-tracking.
- online and automated processing of expenses, supplies and business assets.
In addition, Workday Platform brings manager self-service (MSS) to expedite approvals (time, expenses, etc.) and actions efficiently into your daily routine, freeing time for leadership, customer service and value-added work. All from your phone if you choose to.
Over the next several months, additional communication and training will be shared so that you are able to embrace Workday when it arrives in December. In the meantime, please view a brief video introduction to the Workday Platform.
In addition, we’ll begin the student journey to Workday this spring. Workday Student will transform all student administrative processes impacting faculty and students. An additional module of Workday’s single-platform experience, Workday Student functions will be tightly integrated with Workday Platform. Please view a brief overview of Workday Student.
Teaming with UA is Avaap, an Ohio-based Workday Certified Implementation Partner. Avaap has supported more than 70 Workday implementations and provides many resources with the skill sets to ensure the success of this project. UA is excited to partner with Avaap for this endeavor.
For updates about our journey to Workday, please visit our project website and look for invitations to a project kickoff in the coming weeks. Monthly campus updates will be provided via a project newsletter and corresponding live forum. Questions may also be directed to workdayqa@uakron.edu at any time.
Workday is an exciting and significant investment for The University of Akron. Thank you in advance for your cooperation, support and collaboration as we move along our journey to Workday!