The two foundational principles supporting Project SPARK:
- To replace the existing ERP system (Ellucian Banner) to provide a stable solution for HR, Finance, and Payroll, and ultimately to service our students.
- Identify and improve upon common business policies and procedures for efficiency. Processes need to be changed where they no longer support/serve the university optimally. The ERP alone will not ‘fix’ things, we need to put better practices in place so when we use them in the new system we become more efficient.
In January 2023, NJIT was approved to begin the review and selection process to find an ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) tool intended to replace our legacy Banner system. After Ellucian migrated Banner to the cloud we experienced frequent, increased instability in our ERP environment resulting in significant risk to our operational and reputational integrity.
Co-sponsored by President Lim and Provost Pelesko, Project SPARK engaged 100+ members of the NJIT community to begin work on selecting a tool to meet all of our requirements. With the release of an expansive RFP, followed by in-depth review of vendor responses, Workday was deemed as the best fit from a technical, functional and pricing perspective.
Why Workday?
- Simplifies access to information through a single, user-friendly portal
- Provides a seamless end-to-end experience for users with intuitive navigation
- Improves the administration and delivery of key human resource, benefit, payroll, and financial services
- Automates many paper-driven, labor-intensive business processes
- Makes it easier and faster to submit and track changes
- Leverages data by storing employee, financial, and operational information in a centralized, unified system
- Supports real-time analytics and reporting directly within the system of record
- Utilizes cloud-based technology to provide hassle-free tools and centralized information access
- Designed like a consumer website to enable simple and efficient user navigation
Guiding Principles
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Community 1
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Simplicity 2
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Functionality 3
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Excellence 4
Community First
- Focus on community over individual, remaining transparent and inclusive to all of our stakeholders
- Keep the customer front of mind
- We are only successful if our customers like and adopt Workday
- The optimal solution is one that requires minimal training to deploy
Simplify & Automate
- Make policy and process changes to create modern and sustainable practices, eliminating manual processing or bloated approvals.
- Save time
- Maximize our work efforts
Deliver Functionality, Avoid Customization
- Invest in configuring tools to accommodate all types of diversity
- Prioritize product functionality relying on configuration rather than customization
- Align the organization with industry best practices
- Reduce complexity of configuration, reducing ongoing maintenance
Strive for Excellence Over Perfection
- Prioritize thoughtful, deliberate and timely decisions with a focus on impact and outcomes
- Strive for excellence over perfection
- Change is a process of continuous improvement and refining the processes and tools we use to conduct our business
