What is ERP?
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) is a type of software that organizations use to manage day-to-day business activities such as accounting, procurement, benefits, employee performance & growth, and in our case, in higher education, it also manages our student life cycle; admissions, curriculum, records & grades, student financials, financial aid and alumni transcripts. A key characteristic of ERP systems is their ability to centralize different business processes and facilitate the flow of data between them, eliminating data duplication and providing integrity as a single source of truth for most business operations.
Workday Overview
Workday's cloud-native capabilities bring a new level of modernity and efficiency to the College's enterprise resource management. It offers a comprehensive suite for financial management, enterprise planning, human capital management, analytics, reporting, and importantly, our student information system, along with all the functions you find today in STAR, reconsidered for today’s needs, that are much different than the needs of previous generation ERP systems. All of this under one single system, with a mobile app on top of it. Everything from vendor and supplier management, to academic planning can be digitized in Workday. This integration across various business processes and data management within the organization enhances the overall operational framework, making it more streamlined and effective.
Transformative Impact
Implementing Workday signifies a significant step towards digital modernization, impacting all areas of our operations. It marks a major upgrade from our legacy systems: PeopleSoft Financials, Human Resources, and STAR. It brings enhanced business process capabilities and offers more streamlined workflows. Its cloud-based model ensures greater accessibility and scalability, allowing for real-time updates and integration, and access to the information you need from anywhere, on any device. It places us in a community of peers that also use Workday, making us professionally attractive.
For employees, this means a better, simpler and more accessible self-service experience, featuring a best-in-class mobile app and website. For power users and managers, this means great dashboards and embedded reporting, full integrated hiring, onboarding, and performance management, as well as best-practice business processes to simplify our day to day work. This will help the College make data-informed decisions and support our world-class workforce.
Faculty will have access to better tools to manage courses, advisees, students and grading.
Our students will gain access to Workday’s powerful suite of academic journey planning tools, to plan, execute, and track their progress throughout their time at the College.
Project Timeline
Tentative kick-off: January 2025, with a go-live for Platform (HR and Finance functions) in early 2026, and a go-live for the student component in the Spring of 2028.
Project Leadership & Contact Information
This work is led by David Shettler (Information Technology Services), Bernard Akatu (Provost’s Office), Elizabeth Dionne (Finance), and Marymichele Delaney (Human Resources) in consultation with working group members from Academic Affairs and Administration and Finance.
FAQ
- I use PeopleSoft in my current role), will my job change? Your workflow might change, but your role will not be impacted. Workday is likely to handle many functions in a more streamlined manner. As we move through the project, we’ll be identifying these changes and ensuring areas are well prepared for this new way of working.
- Can I help with the testing of Workday? The project leads will identify people to assist with testing all aspects of Workday before we “go live.” It will be critical to incorporate many scenarios into the testing, so your feedback will be valuable when we are in that phase of the project.
- Will I have the same access as I did in PeopleSoft? I had access to all multiple PeopleSoft pillars. You will have one login that will allow you access to similar functionality you had before.
- Will I continue to enter my invoices into ChromeRiver? No, you will enter them into Workday.
- Will I continue to reconcile my PCard in ChromeRiver? No, you will reconcile expenses on your PCard through Workday.
- Will I still use the HR Portal as I do today to manage my benefits and payroll / direct deposit? Workday will offer a new self-service portal for you to accomplish these same tasks.
- Will all the important data currently in PeopleSoft be moved to Workday? Yes.
- How will I access Workday? Workday is a web-based product that you will access through the intranet. . You will log in using your Holy Cross credentials.
- Why is Holy Cross moving to Workday? Workday offers many benefits, such as improved work streams, enhanced reporting capabilities, and better collaboration across teams. The move is part of our commitment to leveraging modern technology to enhance financial management at the College. Students and Employees will have a better user experience.
- Will I continue to enter my time into Kronos? No, you won’t need to enter your time in a separate system, you will enter your time into Workday.
- Will other software that I use be going away? Possibly. Workday is powerful and there are many benefits of using one software that has integrated functionality across all modules.