Beginning Finance!

The Workday Finance implementation has kicked off in a major way! 

Discovery Sessions with Alchemy consultants began on February 8th, which is the first step in undergoing a Finance implementation. Discovery Sessions feature Alchemy consultants working with Bowdoin staff in large groups to make sure Alchemy understands Bowdoin's practices and needs. These sessions are focused on uncovering Bowdoin's pain points and our current high-impact practices so the consultants have a better understanding of how to make Workday most effective for Bowdoin's needs. This phase is not focused on process improvements or on developing solutions or plans for how Workday should work - it's conversational and very focused on what Bowdoin does now.

These Discovery Sessions will take two weeks to complete and will be schedulred around these key "Workstreams," which are areas of particular focus for the implementation. Each of these workstreams also has a Lead, who is responsible for making decisions and keeping the workstreams on task and on schedule. 

• Controller - Becky Corey
• Workday Financials Manager - Brittany Geiger
  
  
• Assets and Capital Projects - Marc Berry
• Banking and Settlement - Glenn Morin
• Budgets and Planning - Jamie Tatham
• Financial Accounting - Karen Champagne
• Procurement - Jamie Tatham
• Suppliers - Lynne Toussaint
• Customers - Brittany Geiger
• Grants - Lisa Gauthier

When these Discovery Sessions wrap up, the team will start on the incredibly important Foundation Data Model sessions, which will stretch through the end of February and all of March. These highly interactive sessions help crosswalk the chart of accounts from our existing financial system into Workday. This means mapping our current cost centers into Workday "worktags," and re-constructing our processes. The Bowdoin and Alchemy teams walk step-by-step through the foundations of our finance system to establish our new model. 

Once these FDM sessions are complete, Alchemy will step away for the month of April to start construction of our implementation tenant using what they've learned during Discovery and Foundation Data Modeling. This tenant will undergo multiple stages of change and refinement as the teams start their workstream meetings in May.