Glossary

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  • Absence

    Absence is a Workday term that refers to any time an employee is away from work. Currently our campus utilizes the term “leave.” Absence can refer to any type of employee time off such as vacation, sick time, bereavement, etc. 

  • Banner
  • BPA, or Business Process Alignment

    Business Process Alignment is the process of capturing Richmond’s current business processes as they are before the Workday implementation. An output of BPA is a listing of "alignment opportunities" that inform how the business processes will be streamlined as they are built in Workday.

    The Workday@Richmond team, in conjunction with partners across campus, conducted BPA sessions in 2023, shortly after the project began in earnest. The team mapped out the University’s current processes, policies, and tools, identifying pain points along the way. The processes were then redesigned to be more efficient, to maximize Workday’s functionality, and to align with best practices within higher education. 

    To learn more about the project timeline and the University’s decision to move to Workday, please see the About Workday page.

  • Business User

    Business-users are the core staff within the University’s HR, Finance, and Payroll units who utilize the system to create and edit business processes for the institution’s HR and Finance functions. 

  • Change Management
    Change Management is a methodology that helps employees move through change by providing preparation, support, and skills they need to succeed. Check out our Change Management workstream page for more information.
  • Cost Center
    Cost Center is a number and/or description representing the financial account that funds are charged to and/or sourced from.
  • Cutover

    Cutover is the period when we will begin transferring the University’s Human Resource and Finance business processes from Banner to Workday. To ensure a smooth transition, certain kinds of activities or transactions will be limited or suspended during the cutover period. This will help ensure we have accurate data to move to the new system and will minimize the errors that could occur if transactions are entered into Banner after we begin moving information to Workday.

    For more information about cutover, including detailed cutover activities for Human Resources and Finance, please visit the cutover page.

  • Design & Configure Stage
    The design and configure stage of the Workday project began in fall 2023 and wrapped up in April 2024. During this phase of the project the system was being configured to meet the University’s requirements for data, business processes, integrations, etc.
  • End User
    End-users are individuals who use the system (Workday/Banner) to execute the processes that the HR and Finance staff have designed. For example, an employee using the system to enter their timesheet.
  • ERP, or Enterprise Resource Planning

    An enterprise resource planning system is software used to manage an organization’s key business processes and workflows such as finance/accounting, procurement, asset management, and human resource functions. Workday is the ERP system that is being implemented for Finance, Human Resources, and Payroll at Richmond. For these areas, Workday will replace Banner when it goes live in January 2025.

  • FDM, or Foundation Data Model
    FDM or Foundation Data Model is how Workday organizes financial information. Similar to how we use the FOAPAL and Chart of Accounts in Banner, Workday has a robust classification system for transactions that allows for excellent financial, operational, and external reporting.
  • HCM, or Human Capital Management
    HCM or Human Capital Management is another way of describing Human Resources. Workday uses HCM when referring to human resource functions. At UR, we will continue to refer to our unit as the Office of Human Resources or "HR."
  • SIS, or Student Information System
    SIS or Student Information System in higher education refers to a digital framework that enables institutions to manage student data as well as the functionalities related to each student’s academic journey, such as course registration, grades and progress toward degree, billing, and academic records. The University currently utilizes Banner as its SIS and will continue to do so after the Workday ERP implementation. There are no plans at this time to explore other SIS solutions.
  • Tenant
    A tenant is an instance of Workday. As the Workday implementation proceeds, Richmond will have three to four successive tenants. The final tenant will be the University’s production instance of Workday.
  • Testing Stage
    The testing stage of the Workday project began in April 2024 and will run through late 
    October/early November 2024. During this period the system is tested thoroughly to make sure all separate parts of the system work, as well as the full business processes work together. These tests ensure the system configurations meet UR’s requirements. The testing stage also encompasses payroll parallel testing where multiple payroll runs are completed in both Banner and Workday and then compared to ensure that pay amounts are exactly correct.
  • Workday

    Workday is a leading cloud-based platform for Financial and Human Capital Management. Workday is designed to meet the unique needs of institutions of higher education. Many other institutions, both large and small, have implemented Workday with much success. 

    To learn more about the University’s decision to move to Workday, please see the About Workday page.

    Check out the following video about Howard University’s recent shift to Workday: 

     

  • Workstream
    The Workday@Richmond team is organized into functional groups called workstreams. Each workstream meets to work through specific tasks that arise during the project. Some groups meet often, and others only as needed. Each workstream page provides an overview of the work being done by that team.

    Stay tuned for workstream pages that feature our Finance, Technical, Payroll, Reporting, and Testing workstreams.