Case Studies > Better Together

Better Together

Company Size

1,000+

Region

America

Country

United States

Product

Workday Financial Management
Workday Financial Accounting
Workday Banking and Settlements
Workday Procurement and Supplier Accounts

Tech Stack

Cloud-based Application
Embedded Analytics

Implementation Scale

Enterprise-wide Deployment

Impact Metrics

Customer Satisfaction
Digital Expertise
Productivity Improvements

Technology Category

Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics
Functional Applications - Enterprise Resource Planning Systems (ERP)

Applicable Industries

Education

Applicable Functions

Business Operation

Services

Software Design & Engineering Services
System Integration

About The Customer

Located in historic Providence, Rhode Island and founded in 1764, Brown University is the seventh-oldest college in the United States. The University has a student population of more than 8,000 and 5,100 faculty members. At its foundation, Brown was the first college in the United States to accept students regardless of their religious affiliation. The Ivy League’s engineering program, established in 1847, was the first in what is now known as the Ivy League. Brown’s New Curriculum, adopted by faculty vote in 1969, eliminated mandatory “general education” distribution requirements, made students “the architects of their own syllabus,” and allowed them to take any course for a grade of satisfactory or unrecorded no-credit.

The Challenge

Brown University needed to unify information confined in multiple, dissimilar systems. The University relied on many manual financial processes and its data was stored across several systems, further reducing efficiency. Brown University was in need of a Financial Management software that goes beyond the basics of accounting and would focus on speed, cost, agility, and strategic insights. The Ivy League school struggled with a limited number of finance and accounting capabilities, delayed business insights, and managing business assets. Brown University wanted a full range of Financial and Accounting capabilities in a cloud-based application.

The Solution

Collaborative Solutions partnered with Workday on this multiphase project to deploy the full suite of Workday Financial Management. In Phase 1, Collaborative Solutions led efforts on Financial Accounting, Banking and Settlements, Assets, Projects, Expenses, and assisted Workday on Procurement and Supplier Accounts. This went live after 12 months in July 2013. Phase 2 included Customer Accounts, Project Capitalization, Moveable Equipment and Assets, and went live in a staggered 12 month deployment in July 2014.

Operational Impact

Deploying Workday Financial Management functionality and new business processes resulted in reduction of manual steps and data in disparate systems, increasing the customer’s access to information and the ability to make business decisions with accurate data.
Brown University now has complete visibility into payment processes, cash flow, financial reporting, and business assets.
It now has reduced the time spent collecting, consolidating, and reconciling data from fragmented systems.
Tangible and intangible assets are easily defined, tracked, and accounted for with Business Assets, and Brown can more accurately forecast cash flow with embedded analytics.
The University now gets immediate visibility into financial performance with real-time, comprehensive financial and functional reports.

Quantitative Benefit

Reduced time spent compiling, reconciling, and consolidating data from fragmented systems
Immediate visibility into financial performance with real-time, comprehensive financial and operational reports