- Financials & Adaptive Planning
- Change Management
- Academic Progress Automation
- Centralized Data
Streamlined Financials and Adaptive Planning
Wellesley College has streamlined its financial processes by managing endowments and grants with Workday Financial Management, along with budgeting and forecasting with Workday Adaptive Planning.
“In our previous ERP, managing and tracking endowment income often resulted in discrepancies because everybody kept their own spreadsheets,” says Ravi Ravishanker, CIO and associate provost at Wellesley College. “Workday Financial Management has completely obviated the need for spreadsheets.”
Wellesley College also sees improvements in its budget forecasting capabilities. “With Workday Adaptive Planning, we can pull balances for the current year while building the budget for next year,” Ravishanker says. “This integration has increased our staff’s understanding and knowledge of budget planning.”
A Holistic Approach to Change Management
Wellesley College’s deployment of Workday Student, which lets students, faculty, and staff perform tasks anytime and anywhere, required a unique approach to change management. That’s because the system affected not just staff and faculty but also students. The college created a detailed rollout plan, ensuring smooth adoption across the campus. Students also gave feedback on whether the documents were clear and accessible.
“Our change management strategy involved having two students trained in Workday,” Ravishankar says. “That made a big difference because they were facilitating our meeting with their peers. We had pretty good attendance, and they helped revise it. It went better than we would have hoped.”
The consolidation of applications and the strength of the Workday integrations provided us a holistic view of student information, greatly benefiting our academic and administrative processes.
CIO and Associate Provost
Automated Academic Progress Reports Saves Time
Workday Student, combined with Workday Extend and Workday Prism, has significantly enhanced visibility into academic progress and enrollment at Wellesley College.
Workday Extend also helps Wellesley College navigate its unique declaration-of-major process. The college created a custom app to assign an advisor for each student’s major and minor declaration. The app, along with Workday Academic Progress Report, allows students to get real-time updates on their graduation status, flagging any unmet course requirements. Advisors then prioritize students who need specific courses to complete their degrees. Before, this process had to be done manually.
Besides seeing measurable results using Workday Extend, Wellesley College leveraged Workday Prism to bring in 10 years of historical data from its student data warehouse. That offered a comprehensive source for analyzing trends with 250 different data slicers. “This kind of visibility into the data didn’t exist before,” Ravishanker says.
Data Housed in a Single and Accessible System
Centralizing data with Workday Student offers significant benefits by combining information in a single, accessible, and visible platform. “That provides so much information for students and faculty advisors so they can plan their senior year appropriately,” Ravishanker says. Data about academics, financial aid, advising, student finance, time tracking, work study, and payroll are all in the same system, making tracking and responding easier. “This alone has made a huge difference for us,” he says.
The integration capabilities allowed by Workday streamlined business processes and improved the registration experience. Unbeknownst to faculty members, the student newspaper polled students about registration. “Eighty-five percent of students said the Workday registration is much better or better than the previous ERP system,” Ravishanker says. Students can also save schedules and predefine course selections, which eliminates the need for manual entry during registration windows. That students can quickly and efficiently manage their course enrollments has further enhanced their overall academic experience. “These kinds of things may look small, but they add up to be very powerful,” Ravishanker says.
Recognized worldwide as a premiere higher education institution for women, Wellesley College produces graduates who lead highly successful and pathbreaking careers in areas such as science, government, business, and the arts.
Students, faculty, and staff alike are empowered to reach their goals faster and more efficiently with the help of a Workday suite of financial, academic, and planning tools, says Ravi Ravishanker, CIO and associate provost at Wellesley College. The liberal arts college has seen significant improvements around financial management, change management strategy, and academic progress by taking a holistic approach to overcoming today’s challenges while building a better future.
Workday is a very powerful system that can be used for multiple purposes.
CIO and Associate Provost