Hundreds of research grants are stuck in processing as the University of Washington continues to struggle with the implementation of the $340 million Workday software.
The US West Coast educational institution, said to be second only to Johns Hopkins in terms of federal funding, spent more than five years transitioning 850 legacy technologies to a centralized cloud-based SaaS financial and HR system.
The financial side of the project – officially the UW Finance Transformation – ran into trouble last summer when the backlog of unpaid vendor invoices reached $90 million. By the end of last month, the team had reduced the figure to $43 million, but problems with grant payments persist.
According to the Seattle Times, processing delays affected hundreds of grants due to issues with the Workday system. Current funding issues remain.
In the statement for RegisterA university spokesperson said: “While the necessary migration to Workday from our old legacy systems has been challenging, the update is currently on budget and on track, and we expect our grant and vendor backlogs to return to normal levels by July after people from all over the university put in a significant amount of time and effort.
“We’ve made significant progress with our workflows, but there’s still work to do. It’s not uncommon for a technology change of this magnitude to introduce complex issues. However, these are operational implementation issues and unrelated to the overall performance of the Workday contract metrics and Workday’s status as a key university partner and stakeholders.”
A Workday spokesperson said the company is committed to supporting the University of Washington project. “A significant transition like this requires a number of considerations about change management and processes to support success.”
A management consulting report seen by The Seattle Times shows the project — which began in 2018 — has struggled with IT skills shortages and lockdowns due to the pandemic.
But the Bluecrane report also said the transition plan contained poorly defined priorities and critical decisions were delayed while management put too much emphasis on “experts” and “salespeople”.
It is not the first time that the implementation of Workday has had problems at the university. In 2021 Register reported that teaching assistants (TAs) at Canada’s McGill University spent Christmas waiting to be paid as the institution grappled with a new human resources workday and salary system.
At the time, McGill’s Graduate Student Employees Association said more than 460 TAs had not been paid within the first 30 days of starting work, while more than 180 TAs had not been paid within the first 60 days.
As of January, the university said it had resolved all known cases affecting new hires at the start of the fall semester and is quickly resolving any new cases as they arise.
Workday said it is a leader in higher education with more than 400 institutions using its software. ®