Shaping Workday Student: UBC Participates in Platform Development

Last month program sponsors and directors from the Integrated Renewal Program at the University of British Columbia (UBC) were invited to the Workday headquarters in Pleasanton, California to attend the R1 Focus Group for Workday Student. The two day meeting brought together Workday clients from research institutions implementing Workday Student as part of their enterprise software renewal projects. Other participating universities included the University of Rochester, Ohio State University and Iowa State University.

As a developing platform Workday Student has yet to be implemented end-to-end at a research university. Participants had the unique opportunity to connect with Workday Student product managers and share their vision for the platform with one another, as well as common concerns and opportunities for improvement.

“The focus group helped us as clients to connect with one another and share our vision as we prepare to implement Workday Student in our institutions,” said Dr. Kate Ross, lead program sponsor with the Integrated Renewal Program and associate vice-president, enrolment services and registrar at UBC. “We had the opportunity to understand the development process and provide input for Workday to meet the student platform needs of research universities.”

Representatives from UBC made a strong positive impression to Workday in terms of sophistication of the university’s conception of the academic model and our aspirations for the student academic experience

“The university has a bold vision for how the student experience will be enabled by Workday, which was brought into alignment with Workday’s vision for supporting an enriched student experience,” Ross said.

UBC team members gained valuable insights to how other universities are assembling their program teams and making decisions related to their student implementation, said Asima Zahid, interim student transformation director with the Integrated Renewal Program.

“UBC is the first university of its size to go live with Workday Student as an end-to-end product. At the Integrated Renewal Program we have an opportunity to streamline and align our practices and how we serve our students,” Zahid said. “As a group of institutions pioneering the use of the Workday Student platform we not only have unique opportunity to shape the product but also to break new ground and learn lessons that subsequent clients will benefit from.”

Meeting the needs of current and prospective UBC students is a core priority for the university. Collaborating with Workday clients at other research universities provided UBC with an advantage in shaping the upcoming platform for its students.

Back on the Vancouver campus, Zahid identifies how connecting with peer institutions and Workday allows for a collaborative approach to prioritize certain product gaps and requests for future product enhancements.

“We left with the mutual understanding of how to move forward,” Zahid said.