Austin Community College District (ACC) has started the process to consolidate its multiple student information systems (SIS) with Workday, the college’s enterprise resource management (ERP) system. 

Workday Student will improve access to students’ information and enable optimization of operating efficiencies by improving the user experience; automating processes; and providing coherent, consistent, and relevant data. 

Implementing Workday Student aligns with ACC’s Strategic Plan Goal 4 to provide effective and efficient operations and infrastructure and the Chancellor’s Priority of modernizing ACC’s Technology Resources to enhance the student experience and ensure employees have adequate resources to do their jobs effectively. Former Vice Chancellor of Instruction, Mike Midgley, assumed the new role of Senior Vice Chancellor of SIS in January 2023 to help guide the development and implementation of the SIS. 

“The College implemented our current SIS, Colleague UniData, more than 20 years ago, and we have increasingly struggled to update and maintain that aging system,” says Mike Midgely, Student Information System senior vice chancellor. “We are excited to begin implementation of the third and final component of the Workday ERP. Full implementation of a modern, cloud-based ERP will position ACC well for future growth and for improved processes for faculty, staff, and, especially, our students.”  

Timeline

The implementation of the SIS system is expected to stretch out over a 30-month timeline —  divided into four stages (dates are tentative and subject to change):

  1. Planning | April to June 2023
  2. Architecture and Configuration | July 2023 to August 2024
  3. Deploy and Test | September/October 2024 to Spring/Summer 2025
  4. Full Deployment | Fall 2025

Currently, the college is in its planning stage. This is expected to take about three months to complete. During this phase, the college will examine and map out current business processes.

Following the planning stage, the college will start migrating student, course, and curricular records into Workday. The data will be migrated, cleaned up, and tested. The full data migration should take about 13 months.

Core Teams

Two Core Teams made up of faculty and staff from Student Affairs and Instruction have been pulled together. They are dedicated to the project and will collaborate as needed since many processes overlap. Their role is to work with subject matter experts throughout the college to map out all ACC processes and provide logistical support to keep the process going during the transition. 

“For this implementation, the college is taking lessons learned from the two prior implementations of Workday — Finance and Human Resources — to make the transition to Workday SIS as smooth and effective as possible,” says Midgley. “We want broad engagement in this process and will provide multiple opportunities for people to participate in the process as subject matter experts, and by offering ideas, suggestions, and critiques.”

Next Steps

In the next few weeks, the college will finalize and publish its guiding principles, project committees, and memberships; publish the Workday Student website; and begin ongoing campus-based and collegewide conversations about the project.