Workday Update: Building the Foundation Platform with Avaap
Dear Colleagues,
Throughout the summer, teams across the University have been deeply engaged in the early stages of UMW’s Workday implementation and a tremendous amount of work is underway to help ensure a successful transition to the University’s future platform for finance, human resources, procurement, and other administrative processes.
If you haven’t yet been involved or interacted with the implementation plan, we wanted to share a quick update and outline the timeline for the project.
Right now, project teams are participating in stakeholder interviews, process reviews, planning sessions, and training opportunities with our implementation partner, Avaap. These sessions are helping us evaluate current practices, learn Workday’s capabilities, and identify opportunities to improve how work gets done across UMW. As we’ve discussed from the beginning, our goal is not simply to recreate existing processes in a new system. This implementation gives us an opportunity to adopt effective practices, reduce complexity, and create a better experience for employees and, ultimately, our students.
Workday is more than a technology project. It is an institutional transformation that will modernize how we work and how information is accessed and shared across UMW.
Implementing Workday requires significant time, care and expertise. Many of our subject matter experts from Finance (Accounts Payable, Accounting and Financial Report, Cashier’s Office, Payroll, Student Accounts and Training, Compliance & System Support), Budget, Human Resources, Procurement and Information Technology will be deeply involved in design sessions, system testing and data migration over the coming months.
Because key team members are dedicating a substantial portion of their time to this critical project, typical turnarounds for non-urgent requests may take longer than usual. Our teams remain dedicated to supporting the Mary Washington community throughout this project. Some ways you can help as we work through this implementation are: plan ahead by submitting requests as early as possible to allow time for review amongst other project related duties, and be patient with our staff that are working incredibly hard to improve our administrative systems while continuing to serve the needs of our campus partners.
The implementation timeline spans approximately the next year, and participation will expand steadily as the project progresses. During the coming months, the focus will remain on process design, configuration, testing, and training for project teams and subject matter experts. As we move further into the implementation, more employees will be invited to participate in demonstrations, testing activities, training opportunities, and communications tailored to their roles. For many employees, the details most relevant to their day-to-day work will become clearer throughout 2027 as we move closer to deployment for the finance and HR platform by July 1, 2027.
Throughout this process, we are committed to providing regular updates and the resources needed to support every member of our community. Training will also be a key part of the implementation. You can track the progress on the project on the UMW Workday implementation website. Our goal is to ensure that UMW employees are prepared, informed, and confident as Workday becomes part of our daily work.
With appreciation,
Workday Project Executive Steering Committee
Jacob Long, Vice President for Administration and Finance/Chief Financial Officer
Jeff McClurken, Chief of Staff, Vice President of Strategy
Tim O’Donnell, Provost
Jonathan Piersol, Chief Information Officer