I am writing to provide you an update of the latest progress on the transition of OSU’s financial system from PeopleSoft/eRequest/eTravel to Workday. The Workday implementation is entering the 2nd phase of 5 phases, the Architect phase. This is the phase of the project where Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) have been nominated by colleges and units and selected by the OSU project leadership team to participate in the project teams. I considered it a priority to have CFAES staff participate, to help develop in-house expertise, and better position CFAES for a successful transition before, during, and after the switch to Workday. I nominated eight people from CFAES to apply to become a SME in various areas and four were selected.
Throughout the Architect Phase, business process leads, with the help of SMEs, will work to define business processes and design the processes in Workday. The SMEs have a significant role in the implementation.
Jessi Favret (CFAES central units) was selected for Business Assets. Business assets consist of any asset, either capitalized or required to be tracked and maintained over a period of time greater than 1 year. Business processes include: asset identification, registration, tracking/audits, ownership assignment/transfers, accounting, asset retirement, disposal, and related reporting.
Carol Allen (CFAES business service center) was selected for Expenses, which is very travel oriented. Expenses will cover travel (including travel requests, travel booking, group travel, conference travel, project travel, etc.), p-cards, reimbursements (including expense reports, reimbursement payments for both employees and non-employees/guests, receipt capture, credit card transactions) , and related reporting.
Eric Maul (Food Science and Technology) was selected for Financial Accounting. Financial Accounting will cover general ledger activities including financial statements, accruals and allocations, consolidation and reconciliation, budgets, and related reporting.
Angie LeMaster (CFAES finance – grants) was selected for Grants. Grants will cover the lifecycle of an award at the University, from award creation through award closeout. Business Processes will include: sponsor maintenance, budget creation, award set up, award management, award closeout, sponsor billing and related reporting.
Congratulations for being selected and for committing to meet the expectations below. We know that you will represent CFAES very well.
The overall CFAES lead for Workday implementation is Brain McClain. As the college advocate for the project, he will be meeting every week with project leadership and representatives of other colleges to receive updates and provide input. Also, he will be helping coordinate anything that needs completed and then eventually working to implement.
From the OSU Workday implementation leadership, we understand there will be additional opportunities for participation before the Workday software is live. They have communicated to me the following:
- We are planning on college specific touchbases throughout the fall and winter. Since CFAES is large and diverse, I would assume that we will need more than a few meetings to understand your needs.
- We are continuing to work through resource needs for planning and budgeting and reporting, depending on your specific college needs that could be significant time especially between April and July 2017.
- Additional outreach will be needed for testing. There will be various requests through the period of April 2017-June 2018.
- With the target go live of June 2018, we plan to release training and other materials in late April/early May 2018.
We will continue to communicate as we learn more about the project and the progress of the project.
Eric Bode
Finance Director