Stakeholder Interview: Jennifer Burns and Joanne Fox

Preparing our community for Workday Student

As UBC approaches the launch of Workday Student, we thought it would be helpful to share some insights from the people behind the project. Over the next several months, we will bring you the perspectives of those who are either working closely with the project or who will be impacted end users. In our second instalment, Jennifer Burns and Joanne Fox share their thoughts on how they believe Workday Student will improve the lives of UBC’s students and staff.

Describe what you do with the IRP Student program:

JB: My overarching role is to ensure that the technology we use at UBC  supports, empowers and enables our strategy and objectives. That dovetails nicely into my role with IRP Student as I am accountable for the success and delivery of Workday Student, a key component of UBC’s strategy. Additionally, I serve as a Sponsor for the Integrated Service Centre which supports the current Workday HR and Finance systems, and the future Workday Student deployment are building in IRP Student.

JF: Program Sponsors are key leaders who are involved in helping the program make strategic leadership decisions. We represent the best interests of UBC and bring different perspectives into the decision-making process. We focus a lot on strategic thinking related to how Workday Student will be implemented.

Part of my role is helping to communicate what our current processes are and how this change fits into those processes, and then what is needed to understand how we change, and what information we need in order for us, as a whole community, to be as ready as we can be for this change.

What are your thoughts on Workday Student as a whole?

JB: The journey of trying to find a replacement student system at UBC, which ultimately turned out to be Workday Student, dates back to the early 2000’s. We have approached this with the goals of fulfilling the student journey at UBC and enriching the faculty and staff that use this system. We feel that Workday Student is the best fit for our needs and will create a transformative student experience.

We also have modernized our UBC ecosystem around Workday Student. This will create support for the new system to ensure we have a secure, scalable and sustainable environment. For example, so many of our students become employees at UBC and to solve the issue of students having to create multiple profiles, our identity and access management has been updated to allow students to have one singular identity to make the transition into becoming an employee simpler for everyone involved.

JF: Workday Student is a transformative change. It’s going to be an improved experience for people who are using our student systems, both the staff who support students and the students themselves. It will have a more modern look and feel, and it will have enhanced security. Our goal is to facilitate a top-tier student experience. I am really excited about the fact that Workday Student is almost like a puzzle, where each piece fits together and the end result is one versatile and integrated system.

What is it about Workday Student that excites you most?

JB: The piece that I find to be most exciting is this idea of a platform approach. We are not implementing a program with a singular purpose, we are instead building a system that is going to be aligned across UBC. This means we will have the ability to house multiple business services, including Human Resources, Payroll, Finance and Student all on one Platform. This consolidation of activities means we will have a seamless user experience across multiple systems. 

I’m equally as excited about the terrific amount of commitment and passion displayed by the IRP Student team during this endeavour. I have so much respect for everyone on this team and I am proud of the work they are doing. I also want to say thank the UBC community for their continued support – this has truly been a UBC effort. We want to create a system that allows students to focus on their studies and pursue their aspirations. Workday Student will provide them with this opportunity.

JF: One of the things I am most looking forward to is seeing how students react to Workday Student and to find out which aspects of the system they find to be most useful. It’s such a big change, but it will provide us with lots of opportunities to rethink the ways in which we interact with and support students. We weren’t necessarily always able to think proactively about the student experience with the Classic SIS because it is a system at the end of its life, but Workday Student will give us a chance to shape the future for students at UBC. Big aspects of students’ lives like wait-lists and registration will be modernized, and I am really excited to see the benefits of these innovations.

What do you say to staff or faculty who are anxious about the transition from the Classic SIS to Workday Student?

JB: As we approach implementation, there is going to be fear, uncertainty and doubt. Workday Student might not work perfectly from day one and we are prepared for that. We are committed to ensuring that the transition is as smooth as possible for users, but we know there will be challenges ahead. The beauty of Workday Student is that this system will continue to evolve with UBC. I really want to encourage people to view this implementation as a continuous cycle of enhancements and upgrades that will begin on October 4. We will continue to invest in Workday Student to make sure any deficiencies it has are addressed and importantly to take advantage of new capabilities, some of which are not yet imaginable.

JF: The Classic SIS has been in place for over 30 years, so that means we have more than 30 years of expertise with that system. I don’t want to underscore the amount of change this will be – Workday Student will be a huge shift in many of the ways we do things. I know change is daunting and there will be growing pains, especially in the early days of Workday Student, and what I see is a real commitment to make this change go as smoothly as possible, and to continue improving. There is so much expertise and motivation within the community and great teamwork between the experts on the ground who ultimately will be using Workday Student and the talented team developing the program.