Update from Financial Systems and Solutions – A note from Steven Gaudreau

If you are like me, it is hard to believe the end of May is already upon us. As we turn the corner into June, activities related to fiscal year-end have already begun for many in Finance. This is no different for the Financial Systems and Solutions team. Planning began months ago by all the FSS teams, in collaboration with members of the Controller and Procurement teams, as well as many others, to lay out all the year-end activities. Here are the links to the final published year-end calendar and year-end closing procedure, in case you have not seen them.

In addition to all the year-end activities, there are many other initiatives and projects that the FSS teams have been working on that are scheduled to be delivered this summer that may be of interest and/or impact you. The list is too long to include everything, but here are a few highlights of things to come:

Finance Data Mart – Procure to Pay Data – In preparation for some of the work related to Internal Controls, the Financial Reporting and Analytics and Procure to Pay System teams have been working on adding the Workday Procure to Pay data into the Finance Data Mart.

Graduate Student Funding (GSF) – This will be replacing the legacy home-grown Graduate Student Payment System (GSPS), which was originally built in 1995. The new solution, currently scheduled to go live in July, will more effectively utilize the Student ERP system (Banner), the HR and Finance ERP System (Workday), and a newly developed data mart. This new solution will provide payroll processing and fellowship documenting for ~2,800 Graduate students, streamlining both the payroll processing and financial recording.

YBT Enhancements – In collaboration with the Budget Office, every summer the team performs an activity known as YBT Summer Camp. This year, there are numerous enhancements that will be put into Production in the month of August. More details to follow on the specific new functionality when testing completes and as we get closer to the go live date. The application is also being upgraded to the current Axiom version 2022.1 on June 17, 2022.

Compliance for Credit Card by Phone Payments – Partnering with Yale New Haven Health Systems (YNHHS), the Controller’s and FSS teams will be deploying a new solution that will now meet the PCI Compliance requirements. Although the first phase of this project will be deployed by the end of FY22, it only addresses those payments related to EPIC. The remaining departments will be implemented throughout FY23.

Workday People Experience – Coming this summer with the Workday 2022R2 release, a new user interface, known as Workday People Experience, is planned to be deployed. This new way of working is intended to tailor activities that are most relevant to the individual user, serving up the most frequently accessed tasks, easily providing critical reminders and suggesting insights on how to perform work more efficiently. Members of FSS, HRISS, and approximately 80 volunteer users across the university have been piloting the new People Experience for more than 6 months. We continuously provide feedback to Workday to influence future improvements. More information will be provided on this as we get closer to August/September.

In closing, I am so proud of the work that the Financial Systems and Solutions team performs day in and day out to ensure the more than 20 systems they are responsible for remain in a ready to serve state throughout the year by all our colleagues in Finance and around the university. Additionally, I could not be more pleased with the collaboration and innovation across all the teams within Finance. All of you are truly inspiring.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at askfinance@yale.edu, fss@yale.edu or steven.gaudreau@yale.edu.