LMU Getting New Financial, HR Software

UNIVERSITY NEWS | The company that provides the software for LMU’s financial and human resources operations over the past 20 years is reducing its investment in this software. No major new functionality will be released as it shifts its focus to a different product. In response to that change, Propel LMU, the multi-year project that will transform the way the university uses software to support its financial and human resource processes, was launched. The new software platform selected via Propel LMU will improve faculty and staff self-service options, data access and reporting, and provide greater support of academic activities.

After extensive software vendor interviews and a great deal of engagement with the LMU community via software demonstrations and feedback collection, LMU has entered into contract negotiations with Workday, an on-demand financial and human resources software vendor, and hopes to successfully complete negotiations within the next few months. When their software is fully implemented, Workday will provide streamlined and digitized processes that will benefit faculty, staff and students. The Propel LMU System Evaluation and Implementation Committee and Executive Steering Committee both believe that the sophisticated, state-of-the-art Workday software will meet the diverse and complex needs of faculty, staff, and administrators at LMU.

Community Feedback
Input from system review participants informed the decision. A rigorous and open process was employed in the decision to partner with Workday: 72 members of the LMU community took part in determining the requirements that were included in the request for proposals, while 92 people viewed in demonstrations by prospective vendors, and 76 people attended the on-campus demonstrations. The input from these participants informed the decision, along with Workday’s presence and experience in the higher education space.

Why Workday?
Feedback from the LMU community about Workday was decisively positive and consistent with Workday’s recent success in finance and human resources software selections at other universities, including Georgetown, University of San Francisco, Santa Clara University, St. Louis University, and Fairfield University. The user-friendly Workday interface offers one platform that provides real-time information to users equally well on mobile devices and large monitors. The new software will also streamline processes academic processes like research grant management and administration, student employee hiring and management, faculty recruitment and hiring, and academic program financial management and planning.  Addtionally, when the system is operational, faculty, staff, and students will be able to access it from any device, anytime, anywhere, and manage their benefits, update personal data, and conduct university business.

Propel LMU – Workday Implementation
The timetable for the migration of financial and human resources platforms – and how and when faculty and staff will be affected – is still being determined.

Because many current systems and processes will be affected, the university is looking for broad LMU community engagement and input in designing the functionality of the system, as it moves forward. Systems that will more than likely change include:

  • Concur (expense and invoice submission);
  • Longview (budget planning);
  • InfoEd (grant management);
  • Workforce [aka MyTime] (timekeeping and absence tracking).

The next step during this process will be the selection of a system implementation vendor, who will have a team onsite at LMU for the entire implementation phase of the project. The goal is to have the vendor in place by January 2020 with implementation commencing in February 2020.

Propel LMU – a commitment to transforming processes and improving technology in support of our academic and administrative endeavors. Please contact Propel@lmu.edu with any questions and visit our website at lmu.edu/propel.

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