The Workday implementation at URI will modernize the university’s administrative technology and business operations across multiple functions. Stages will vary in length and complexity, with multiple opportunities for stakeholder participation.
Where Are We Now?
Planning Stage:
The Planning Stage kicks off the implementation of Workday at URI. The work in this stage ensures we are planful and aligned on our approaches to support our implementation and position our university and stakeholders to meet the evolving needs of our campus community through our system modernization effort.
In this stage, we are planning the most critical and foundational elements of the project including data migration, integrations and designing our organizational and account structure. Our organizational structure design includes our management hierarchy including who reports to who at URI as well as our Foundation Data Model (FDM) that will represent a more comprehensive and multi-dimensional version of our chart of accounts, replacing our chartfield string.
Key activities include:
- Defining project plan: Establishing the overall project plan, defining critical milestones and deliverable and outlining project expectations to support successful implementation.
- Building a sustainable foundation: Building the foundation data model to replace URI’s chart of accounts and management hierarchy structure to ensure the foundational structure of Workday is sound and provides users with critical and reliable information.
- Connecting data and systems: Identifying critical systems and data requiring connection, integration and access to ensure internal and external systems are supported with our system of record data.
- Establishing engagement: Defining and conveying stakeholder groups to support meaningful and effective engagement throughout the project lifecycle.
- Defining goals, success measures and building a collaborative team: Aligning on project objectives, establishing measures of success and building a cohesive team to ensure project completion.
Why is the Planning Stage Important?
The Planning Stage helps URI:
- Define how data will move from legacy systems to Workday
- Identify system integrations needed to support human resources and finance
- Establish reporting relationships across departments
- Design the FDM, our new financial data model
Planning Stage Timeline
The Readiness stage began in January 2026 and will conclude in April 2026. Outcomes from this stage will directly impact additional stages of the implementation timeline.
What’s Next: Architect and Configure Stage
The Architect and Configure stage will begin in spring, 2026. One of its first key activities will be defining the Foundation Data Model (FDM) — the core structure Workday uses to organize financial data. This work will include mapping how URI tracks, categorizes, and reports financial information, and may impact or align with our current chartfield structure.
Stages of the Workday Project Defined
| Readiness Building a Foundation for Success | Planning Defining the Future | Architect and Configure Modernization at Work | Test Ensuring Success | Deploy Moving URI Forward |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| In this initial stage, URI is focused on evaluating our current technology and data and assessing our business requirements to identify opportunities to create efficiency with Workday. Project infrastructure, governance and support is also established during this stage to ensure the project is adequately supported and set up for success. Stakeholder engagement plans are also being developed to ensure we are effectively working with our campus community throughout the project lifecycle. | In this stage, URI will be formalizing the project scope and officially launch the project. Preparation of data, integrations, and reporting will begin to support our first Workday build. Work on creating our financial data model or new chart of accounts as well as our management hierarchy will also take place during the Planning stage. Stakeholder engagement plans will launch, and we will begin informing the campus community of the upcoming impact. | In this stage, URI’s project team will be working with Workday to design business process workflows and configuration to ensure our business operations are streamlined and standardized. URI’s administrative policies and business requirements will also be built into the system to ensure seamless integration. Stakeholder engagement plans will launch to help inform and support the campus community. Stakeholders will also be invited to participate in an early preview of system changes. | In this stage, URI will begin thorough testing of the Workday system to evaluate the newly designed processes, reports, integrations and security access to ensure they are meeting our business needs and identify areas for improvement before deployment. Data validation will also take place and initial training resources will also be delivered during this stage. Stakeholder groups will also be invited to participate in user acceptance and experience testing during the Testing stage. | In this stage, URI will begin training the campus community. Roles to support system access will be assigned and system support processes will be deployed. Departmental data validation will begin. Additional system readiness activities will also take place. After the system launches, training and “hypercare” support will continue to ensure a smooth transition to Workday at URI. |