The following appeared in President Bravman’s August 2016 Summer Update on University Initiatives.
Workday Software System
I have often talked about Bucknell as principally a human organization. All of us in some way contribute to our mission of educating our students. There are certain tools and processes necessary to carry out that mission, both on an individual and an enterprise level, including Banner. For more than a decade, we’ve relied on Banner to manage, among other things, human resource- and finance-related activities. Unfortunately, that system is inflexible and antiquated. The reporting and analysis tools enabling the Banner financial and human resource (HR) platform have failed to evolve and in many ways have grown to be more of a burden than a resource. With that in mind, we sought an alternative solution, and after an extensive and comprehensive review of what the marketplace has to offer, we selected the Workday system.
Workday is a modern, cloud-based software solution that addresses HR, payroll and financial needs and is used by dozens of highly respected institutions, such as Bowdoin, Brown, The Claremont Colleges, Cornell, Georgetown, LSU, Yale and many others. It is not a mere replacement for Banner; it is a transformation in how we access and interact with those systems. Once implemented, Workday will enhance our ability to manage personal information, such as addresses and phone numbers; direct deposit accounts; information on dependents; and tax withholdings. Workday’s robust reporting features will also put important data and information directly in the hands of designated users, as appropriate, allowing those individuals to better manage budgets and staffing and make data-informed decisions that currently require multiple steps.
This transition to Workday, with all of its capabilities, also provides Bucknell with an opportunity to not just replace Banner’s HR and finance functions, but to reimagine and align certain business practices in those areas, enabling our colleagues in HR and Finance to better support the campus and develop more efficient processes. While we are still evaluating the opportunities to be more effective and intentional in this area, the University as a whole will benefit from these changes. For the present, we will continue to use Banner for our student and other academic information (Registrar’s functions) systems, though we have begun preliminary conversations on finding a modern software solution in those areas as well.
In the weeks ahead, we will launch a web area to serve as a resource for updates, training and other information pertinent to this endeavor. And as we work toward our goal of launching Workday in summer 2017, we will provide updates on the initiative, as well as outreach and training based on your job responsibilities. This project is a significant undertaking, and it would not be possible without the dedication of our colleagues primarily in HR, Finance and L&IT, who have been working in earnest on this since January. I’m grateful for the work already done by our colleagues on this complex project.