Why is the Workday Student implementation timeline so long?

The system we go live with in 2024-25 will be the most up-to-date version of Workday, with updates pushed to us every six months. This is one of the benefits of buying a cloud-based system versus building and supporting an on-site system, which is what WashU has historically done.  

This extended timeline helps set the stage for success by giving us time to mitigate several risks and address opportunities before implementation begins. Specifically, the timeline extension allows us to: 

• Better prepare our data for conversion
• Complete assessments needed to support system integrations
• Identify and make any desired policy or process changes in advance of implementation
• Focus on key hiring, including transitioning staff who will be rolling off the HR and Finance implementation

Workday Student also follows a different structure for go-live than HR and Finance. Student’s rolling go-live occurs over the course of one academic year, which adds a year to the Student timeline. The length of the system implementation itself is three years, just like HR and Finance.