About Workday
What is Workday?
Workday is a leading cloud-based platform that will revolutionize the way the University manages administrative tasks and processes. Renowned for its user-friendly interface, efficiency, and comprehensive suite of tools, Workday will bring about positive changes like saving time, streamlining processes, and offering greater support for faculty, staff, and students alike.
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. The following videos provide examples of the reasons why other Universities have also selected Workday.
How was it decided that the University would move to Workday?
The University has been using Banner as its Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system and Student Information System (SIS) for over 30 years. Banner was one of the first technological advances at the University as it was utilized before the campus began using email and had internet access!
Banner has served the University well since 1992. In 2016 the University conducted a review of Banner to evaluate whether it was still able to provide the data and reporting functions needed at the University. Following the review, the University opted to remain with Banner while also creating UR Better, a structured process improvement initiative that would serve to holistically evaluate and implement operational improvements and streamline University processes. Since it’s formation, UR Better has implemented Chrome River, Dynamic Forms, and many other improvements across campus.
As University operations have grown in complexity, use of Banner has continued to require significant time and effort to maintain. The lack of automated workflows drive excessive manual data entry causing frustration and time. Likewise, UR’s strategic goals and tactical needs have evolved to include forecasting tools and real-time reporting, which cannot be accommodated with our current systems. The University also had to consider the risk of continuing to use an old and outdated system, which could mean an emergency replacement if the system failed. Simply put, the University outgrew Banner.
Recognizing this, in 2022 the University returned to the ERP modernization conversation begun in 2016 in hopes that the timing might be right for an upgrade. In preparation, technical evaluations, cost estimates, and a data quality assessment were conducted, along with soliciting a formal request for proposals (RFP). The University evaluated vendor proposals, and in 2023, with ultimate approval from the University’s Board of Trustees, Workday was selected as the University's next ERP.
Workday Implementation
Knowing that it would take 20+ months to implement the new system, the Workday@Richmond Project Team was assembled. The team is composed of UR employees from key areas of the institution who are devoting their time, on a partial or full-time basis, to the Workday project. The team's first task was conducting business process alignment (BPA) sessions where the team mapped out the University’s current processes, policies, and tools, identifying pain points along the way. Each process was then redesigned in order to maximize Workday’s functionality as well as align with best practices.
Currently, the project is in the testing phase, where several thousand business processes and configurations are being tested to ensure they work as intended.
