Want Workday Student in the next 3-5 years? Get Ready Now

Workday Student is a powerful tool that has moved many institutions into new horizons. But as a powerful tool (and a significant investment), any institution considering a Workday Student implementation should enter into the decision with extensive planning and preparation.

Here are some considerations we recommend institutions complete in preparation for any student information system, especially Workday Student:

1)       Document every process in its current state as a workflow visual using Microsoft Visio or a similar tool. This seems like it would be easy, but 9 times out of 10 when people see the visual they start to disagree or question how the existing process even works. Don’t underestimate this effort. Once I spent nearly a year just documenting the existing leave of absence/withdrawal policy and designing a new one. It took a long time to hear from all the groups impacted by this process and figure out how to navigate each office’s requirements to rebuild a better one.

2)       Once you have the existing process done, design a future state. Think about your strategic plan. What’s the ideal experience for your institution? What stays in the existing process and what needs to go? Identify everything in the process that is a result of a limitation in the existing system limitation. Create a new workflow visual as well as a written document with more detail. The written piece should focus on desired outcomes. This will be great to use when evaluating SIS products and implementing them.

3)       Start your data clean-up. You’re going to need to clean up your educational institution. If you don’t have to, please let me know because I want to understand how you’re the one school that kept this data clean over the years. 😄 Look for the students that are outliers (e.g. missing programs of study that are required). International addresses are often another issue. Build systems to review and track these data entry errors going forward.

4)       Document all key actions in each office over one calendar year. Each office may have its own calendar of operations. In a system like Workday Student, all offices and all their processes will be integrated. Offices can no longer work in the silos they used to. Starting to begin awareness and communication about key actions that impact students will help both now and later.

5) Begin developing skills within your team for tasks resembling those of a "business analyst". While this may not be a specific role at your school, these competencies are crucial for the successful implementation and management of techno-functional systems (such as Workday Student and Slate). For instance, your team members should possess advanced Excel proficiency, enabling them to execute VLOOKUP/XLOOKUP functions with precision. For this reason, Legato offers a specialized business analyst training program to ensure you have these crucial skills on-site.