These changes may bring some anxiety, but they must be undertaken if we are to become the university for the future. We have accepted this challenge because we cannot sustain our current processes and practices if we want to meet our mission and new strategic plan. Workday and Service Enhancement Transformation (SET) will help us collaborate and work as one 麻豆原创 toward these efforts. Using Workday will ultimately improve and streamline our practices, bring more transparency to our budget and provide better data more quickly that will allow strategic decision-making.

Many of you have taken advantage of the training available online to prepare for these changes. If you haven鈥檛 accessed the training catalog we encourage you to do so. The Knight Vision team has done a tremendous job in preparing a variety of helpful tips and resources in their weekly emails, and I encourage everyone to read and share the June 24 edition, if they have not seen it yet. It outlines how to interact with kNEXT, Workday Help and the Business Centers.聽 If you are looking for where to start 鈥� knext.ucf.edu is it when launched!聽 The site will be operational by July 1, as will the Customer Care Team if you need to call us at 407-823-NEXT (6398).

We checked off all the objectives for making our decision to 鈥済o live.鈥� They are, (i) pay our people, (ii) pay our bills, (iii) close our books, and (iv) hire our people. All four will be met. We have a dedicated and committed group working with our implementation partners, Accenture and Huron, to make our launch a success. We know that trying to modernize our system, processes, practices and in some instances policies that govern our financial and operational effectiveness and efficiency means we will have a bumpy road at the start. As we continue with testing and validation, we are finding processes and practices that we will visit and revisit multiple times until we can get as close to automation as possible.

You might have heard us talk about the desire to have our financial and operational effectiveness match our world-class research, academic rigor and public service. That is our primary goal. You might have also heard the expression 鈥渨e are moving from the Flintstones to the Jetsons with our financial and operating systems.鈥� That is our secondary goal. The two are mutually exclusive, but for purposes of lifting our university to that next level of operational effectiveness and efficiency, they are inextricably linked.

We chose several examples to highlight our journey to continuous improvement when Knight Vision is deployed and matured over the next several weeks, months and years. Here are a few:

1. For expenses, there is no need to submit paper statement packets monthly. All receipts and approvals will be included in the Workday Expense Report.
2. There is no need to submit paper reimbursement packets. All expenses and receipts are submitted and approved in Workday. Employees will be able to see where their Spend Authorization and Expense Reports are in the approval workflow within Workday. Photos of receipts can be added to Workday via the mobile app, making it easy to keep track of receipts during travel.
3. We have reconfigured our main finance and human resources systems to a modern approach around the timely and accurate recording, summarization and reporting of financial information.
4. We launched Adaptive Planning in March 2021. Although it still needs to be tweaked, that effort afforded us the opportunity to create the university鈥檚 first 鈥渂ottom up鈥� university wide budget inside our new Responsibility Center Management (RCM) budgeting model. Under the RCM model, revenue-generating units are responsible for managing their own revenues and expenditures.
5. In Workday, we will have a new accounting system that will get us closer to closing our books monthly. This will bring a nimbleness to our operations and financial reporting, providing data faster for decision-making.
6. We are reducing the number of departmental accounts from more than 9,000 to approximately 1,000. That will reduce the number of accounts that are available for entries to be made, thus tightening up on our main goal of having timely and accurate financial and human resources information.
7. We will now be managing our university wide operations using cost centers and various work tags, allowing users the flexibility to tag transactions with labels relevant to their business operations.
8. In the future we can move away from the number of unnecessary 鈥渢ransfers鈥� and 鈥渃hargebacks鈥� that do not add economic value but cause a tremendous amount of 鈥渂usy work.鈥�
9. We are bringing together our Direct Support Organizations (DSOs) into one cogent system that will allow for views into their financial operations that we currently do not have.
10. We are developing centers of excellence and creating career paths for individuals who would like to grow and develop within disciplines.
11. We are reducing the number of ways to procure and pay for transactions from approximately聽94, down to approximately 15.
12. We will be implementing/enhancing a formal Talent Acquisition Center within Human Resources that will serve the campus in more robust ways around recruiting, retention and talent management.
13. We will now have an integrated time reporting system that we can access from anywhere. No more LAPERS or Time Sheets!
14. We will have an ecosystem for our university that ties together systems, policies, practices and procedures. That ecosystem will be governed by standard operating procedures that we currently do not have.

We are acutely aware that Knight Vision and its component parts of Workday, Adaptive Planning and our Service Enhancement Transformation (SET) are not panaceas that will solve all the challenges we have now with our current PeopleSoft system. However, with teamwork, patience, grace and focused attention we will rise to the level where several of our peers are already.

The entire kNEXT Team, under the leadership of Ms. Kathleen Winningham, is ready 鈥� and excited 鈥� about the Workday and SET transformation we are embarking on, and we look forward to supporting everyone that needs our assistance. We are embarking on this new journey as 鈥淥ne 麻豆原创.鈥� We will be successful.

Go Knights! Charge On!

For the past two years our campus has heard about Knight Vision. There have been town hall, budget, information, implementation and strategy meetings. We have produced newsletters, websites and other forms of communication to keep information flowing, so that the campus remains engaged and knowledgeable about the pending changes that will occur. Unlike the instantaneous changes that had to be made because of the pandemic, the ones that we are addressing at 麻豆原创聽through Knight Vision have been building for some time. Our financial and operational systems, policies, practices and procedures need to catch up to our level of excellence in academics, public service and research. Knight Vision is designed to do just that.

Within Knight Vision, there are different components when we talk about Go-Live: there is the technical Go-Live, which is the turning on of Workday, funneling our transactions through it, reporting from it and leveraging its data to make decisions. This technology is designed to enable our business, and it will do so in improved, new ways. There is also the business Go-Live, which includes changes to how the finance and HR functions operate, as well as the overlay of the Service Enhancement Transformation (SET) model.

Fundamentally, SET鈥檚 aim is to create a community of our people, organizing and structuring them in such a way to more effectively deliver services to faculty, staff and others focused on our academic and research missions, as well as bring a more standardized and seamless approach to specific finance and HR activities. Our finance and HR functions, the SET business centers and kNEXT support center will all leverage the new Workday technology as they provide these services. Workday and SET could exist independently, but they would not be as effective without each other. Simply put, the structuring and training of our people to best use Workday allows Workday to function in the best way.

The Go-Live date for both Workday and SET is July 1. Working alongside our Workday implementation partner, Accenture, and our SET partner, Huron Consulting, we are optimistic that we will meet that date. It鈥檚 important for our entire campus to understand that July 1 is not an end, but rather, a beginning. There will be things that need to be changed and iterated upon as we learn the Workday technology and our new roles and there will undoubtedly be bumps in the road as we implement both Workday and SET. I don鈥檛 promise an effortless Go-Live, but I do firmly believe that we will see many organizational and technological benefits once we鈥檝e implemented Knight Vision and worked through the learning curve of these changes.

Our final decision on Go-Live is predicated upon four key tenets that are nonnegotiable: our ability to (i) pay our people properly, (ii) pay our bills, (iii) close our books, and (iv) hire people. I am pleased to report that our work is trending to do just that come July 1.

After July 1, we will see:

1. The new service center models created by the Service Enhancement Transformation (SET) team have increased efficiency and streamlined processes to such a degree that we will be able to reduce the number of transaction processing units/departments from approximately 94 down to 13 (one per academic college). This reduction will bring us greater standardization of procurement, processing and compliance procedures so that transactions can be handled faster. It will also allow for us to have a dedicated group who not only are experts in the processing of transactions but will move the university to a place where we can close our books and generate financial and human resources reports monthly. This enhancement will add another element of financial management that keeps data current, and allow for pivots (if needed) during the course of a fiscal year.
2. The kNEXT (central administrative business services) unit will be operational. Members of this unit will not only serve as the subject matter experts on all aspects of our finance and HR processing and compliance but will also service all central support units and be a backup resource to the units in the colleges. You can get a better sense of kNEXT鈥檚 focus from this brief .
3. We will also see an enhanced Talent Acquisition Group that will work collaboratively with the campus to reduce the time to hire of employees. As the group鈥檚 effort matures, it will also assist with reducing the need for search firms and other consultants around our overall talent management.
4. Through the end of 2022, we will be in a stabilization period where we will be fielding questions and concerns about the system and engaging in both customer care and issues resolutions. This is typical for any ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) conversion. Our goal is to minimize interruption and discomfort as much as possible. We are a large university, and although we believe we have captured every nuance in every department or unit, inevitably, some will need attention after 鈥淕o Live.鈥�
5. Training has already started and will continue into the fall and beyond. Some of our university leaders have access to a 鈥渟andbox鈥� in a test environment so that they can understand the functionality of the system. They can assist with the questions or concerns that may arise. We will continue to encourage everyone to get trained on the system鈥檚 functionality. Those who have been a part of the User Exception Testing process have indicated how user friendly it is; however, attention to detail in the training on the system will be critical for everyone working with this new technology tool under the SET model.

This is both an exciting and anxious time with so much change happening together. As the teams have reviewed the different component projects, one thing stands out: the fact that we have not upgraded our ERP system since the early part of this decade. Our modernization of the system, and the processes, procedures and organizational structure of our people that enable it, needs to be upgraded to allow for a greater use of technology, new methods of financial and HR management, and proper execution around the recording, summarization and reporting of information.

I have been inspired to work with the teams on these projects that make up Knight Vision. It has been a very stressful time for all involved with the heavy lift that we are undertaking, and I am humbled and appreciative of the great work they have done to make this implementation a success. I was reminded recently by a colleague that if we answer the challenge of, 鈥測ou can鈥檛 fix what you won鈥檛 face,鈥� we can create a much more aligned, collaborative, and transparent organization. Greater opportunities will exist for us to all grow, develop and execute to ensure that we are meeting that overarching ethos of 鈥淥ne 麻豆原创,鈥� and we will all be able to say that we helped lay the operational and financial foundations for the future of this great institution.

December starts my 12th month since I joined the Knight Nation family, and during this time, I have purposely met with as many campus constituents as possible. Those meetings I dubbed my 鈥�4-year-old tours.鈥� Simply put, I met with deans, vice presidents and directors in their spaces. The single objective was to understand their operations and business models, and how each impacts the overall vision of getting to 鈥淥ne 麻豆原创.鈥� It was truly time well spent.

Over the past several weeks we have announced several initiatives that further the impact of Knight Vision on our campus. In this update, I would like to share my responses to a question that was posed to me at least twice about this project. The question is in two parts: 鈥淢r. Hector, why do we have to do Knight Vision and all its related technologies, and why try to do all of them now?鈥�

One of Dr. Cartwright鈥檚 goals for 麻豆原创 is to have efficient and effective financial and administrative management and operations. Knight Vision focuses squarely on that goal.

Workday

One of the hallmarks of any Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system is to allow for the timely and accurate recording, summarization and reporting of financial information that takes into account all the various business units within an organization. We currently are utilizing the PeopleSoft ERP system, but as we have learned over the years, it does not allow for us to do the three critical items noted above. Much of our work is predicated upon our siloed operational structures between our 13 colleges, various divisions, other units outside the academy and sponsored research. This has resulted in several shadow systems being managed through Microsoft Excel, and other data management software that are not germane to the PeopleSoft system. They require a tremendous amount of manual effort by a plethora of individuals to complete tasks that a modern, well-implemented ERP system would do as a matter of daily functions.

The inability of moving with alacrity around inputting and reporting our data causes much of what we do to go through 鈥渇its and starts.鈥� As noted during the COVID pandemic, our current posture can significantly add to duplicative work, redoing work between the colleges and the central administration, and keeping alive manual processes that peers jettisoned years ago. I sometimes use the expression that we must get from the 鈥淔lintstones to the Jetsons鈥� when it comes to our financial and administrative platforms, such that they keep pace with our stellar academic, research and public service portfolios. We must find ways to reduce the administrative burden on our academic enterprise such that the incredible work of our faculty and researchers can lift the university to higher heights. That is why we need this Workday system implemented.

However, I move posthaste as well to say that Workday is not a panacea for all the various nuances to our operations. No ERP conversion that I am aware of has been 100% error free. We will learn quite a bit after we 鈥済o live鈥� in July 2022. That is normal for a conversion effort of this size and scale. For this reason, we have been engaging the campus in a host of ways to ensure that we remove three words from everyone鈥檚 vocabulary (if possible). Those three words are 鈥淚 didn鈥檛 know.鈥� Our work continues on that front.

Adaptive Planning

Like the challenges with the ERP system, we also have a manual process for our budgeting process. In our current budget model, we do not 鈥渂udget鈥� for Educational and General (E&G) revenues at the university, although it is our largest source of revenues. Given our growth and rise, we have a budget model that deployed funding on an incremental basis to units that experienced greater student enrollment and by extension more growth in student credit hours (SCH). In other words, in our colleges, our deans budgeted to use the funds that were distributed to them year after year by the central administration. The same is true for the nonacademic units. That process worked to keep our operations moving, but it did not have the transparency into how, and more importantly, where the university should be investing to manage our growth.

To that end, we now have critical functions that need an infusion of resources to undergird the growth in enrollment and research activities. Most notably, our Information Technology and Facilities areas need such investments to 鈥渃atch up鈥� to our growing needs for IT resources and first-class facilities. With that realization, we are putting in place a new budgeting tool called Adaptive Planning. We are working through that implementation which will be iterative in nature because of the complexity of our current budget and ERP set up.

As an example, we do not utilize traditional cost centers to capture budgets and expenditures in a rollup fashion. That has allowed us to have over 9,000 departmental and project accounts within our system to carry out the financial management of the university. With Adaptive Planning and Workday combined, we are seeking to have that number limited to between 600 to 1,000. That will mean colleges, units and divisions will be using more modern ways to tag transactions, utilizing cost centers that will inform budgets within the correct 鈥渃olor of money鈥� (funding streams), and building an expenditure profile that is tied to the strategic plan of the university. Like the Workday implementation, Adaptive Planning it is not a panacea, but it is the right path to embark upon for future stability in our financial and administrative management.

Service Enhancement Transformation (SET)

SET will reimagine and improve HR and Finance processes, transforming how services are provided throughout the university and aligning our organizational structure to best meet departments鈥� needs. SET is critically tied to the Knight Vision Workday implementation, which explains why it is occurring at the same time as Knight Vision. The analogy I use while speaking to groups on campus is that we are purchasing two new cars in Workday and Adaptive Planning, and we need to sit in them and drive, versus pushing like we currently are with the PeopleSoft system augmented by spreadsheets, manual workarounds, and the knowledge and memory of individuals. SET opens the door for us to enter the car to drive.

SET is carefully designed as a 鈥渟hared services鈥� approach to our business processes that attempts to limit duplication of effort and work product, enhance our collective purchasing power of the university as a whole to take advantage of strategic sourcing and volume purchasing, and enhance expertise in key functions to meet compliance and other state, federal and local requirements.

We realize that while this change will bring many exciting opportunities for our people and institution, it also can also create a feeling of uncertainty for some employees. Please know we value each and every one of you and the work you do to make 麻豆原创 the leading institution that it is; we believe this transition will be an enhanced experience for all our outstanding staff. It will also allow for our physical resources (Workday and Adaptive Planning) to match and enhance the human resources (SET) here at the university.

On Dec. 10, we held our last Knight Vision Forum, and we were pleased by all the questions and engagement from attendees. We continue to encourage everyone to get involved. In future monthly updates from me, we will provide milestone accomplishments, and be another vehicle to keep this project in front of everyone. Below are some links to various communications resources that you can review:

1. Workforce Transition Plan ()
2. Transition Teams ()
3. SET Business Case ()
4. Knight Vision Web Pages (Knight Vision SET webpages)
5. The SET Gazette ()

I close with answering the second part of the question. We are doing all of these now because we are at a seminal moment in 麻豆原创鈥檚 history. We are making these changes now to allow for the university to pivot to the exciting times that are ahead of us. We are embarking on the Big 12 conference change that will increase our visibility and gravitas across the nation. We are reshaping our operations such that we have the tools to assist with data-driven decisions that will undergird our future successes because we can be nimble, effective, and efficient in getting timely information to key decision-makers. We will have centers of excellence that will not only provide good customer service to our faculty, students and staff, but will also create growth opportunities for current and future employees. We are making these changes now to provide a firm foundation from which we will launch into the future that is destined for us as 鈥淥ne 麻豆原创.鈥�

Go Knights, Charge On!