About the Workday@Yale Program

The Workday@Yale Program brings Yale University’s administrative services in line with its excellence in teaching, research, and practice. The Program's most recent implementation, Workday Financials, launched in July 2017 (see timeline below) and provides Yale with real-time reporting, standardized business processes, and minimized administrative work for the University community.

Background

The administrative software (Oracle eBusiness) that Yale has used for many years to manage its human resources, payroll, and finance operations reached the end of its useful life.  As a result, a replacement solution was researched and it was determined that Workday would meet the University’s current and future operating requirements.

Yale's legacy systems had been customized to respond to the unique needs of each school or administrative unit. This added a layer of complexity that needed to be addressed whenever system updates and/or changes were required. Workday offers configurable frameworks that can be modified and extended while also preventing disruptions when offering future updates. Unlike customization toolkits typically offered by traditional ERP solutions, Workday requires no coding, eliminating the need to involve programmers. This allows Yale to make future changes and upgrades more quickly and easily.

The initial rollout of Workday functionality (Workday HCM) on July 1, 2015, included the delivery of human resource, academic, and payroll modules. This implementation gave individuals greater control and 24/7 access to personal information over a secure network. Employees can also review their personal data from any computer or mobile device with internet access. This self-service functionality allows employees to update their contact information, view pay slips and deductions, access and update benefits, search the directory, and review additional HR information.

The second rollout of Workday functionality (Workday Financials) on July 5, 2017, brought Yale's purchasing, financial and expense reporting, effort certification, and grant processing activities into a single, innovative system to leverage Yale's HR and financials data. This launch required over 170 systems across the University to be updated or retired.

Objectives

As the team continues to optimize Workday, Yale will continue to focus on the following strategic objectives:

  • Simplify and standardize processes
  • Make it easy to get work done and harder to make mistakes
  • Minimize administrative overhead for faculty and end users
  • Lower operating costs and improve effectiveness
  • Establish an accurate, trusted, and timely reporting environment

View the Vision Statement word cloud developed prior to the Workday HCM implementation. Also, view the archive, for past presentations and materials.

Strategy

  • Engage the right people in the right way throughout the program
  • Participate in Workday’s Strategic Advisory Program in order to advance its direction based on Yale’s best interests
  • Include members of the Yale community in the Workday@Yale program by:

– Communicating early and often to ensure that Yale faculty and staff are aware of the objectives and implementation status of the Workday@Yale team, as well as to understand how they can become involved

– Leveraging community opinions and feedback to shape Workday@Yale and improve the overall quality of the implementation

Program Sponsors & Team

The Workday@Yale Program is sponsored by Yale's Finance & Business Operations (F&BO) and Human Resources leadership. The program is advised by a Steering Committee composed of Yale administrative and academic leadership from the Provost, Information Technology Services, Human Resources, Finance, Change Leadership, and Business Offices.

The team also includes technical and functional human resources, finance, and information technology experts from throughout Yale, as well as advisors from Deloitte Consulting, our implementation partner. While Yale is leading the Workday implementation, Deloitte is working alongside the team to supplement activities in a variety of areas.

FY18 Timeline

Workday timeline