A world-class academic and research institution like UW-Madison requires a modern and streamlined administrative infrastructure to succeed in the 21st century.
Vice Chancellor for Finance and Administration Rob Cramer created the Administration Innovation and Planning (AIP) team to help UW-Madison successfully navigate the transition to Workday. Workday is a cloud-based software platform that brings together data about people, finances, and operations. Workday will replace current administrative systems such as the Shared Financial System (SFS) and Human Resources System (HRS), as well as hundreds of ancillary systems, to help UW‒Madison manage and streamline human resources (HR), payroll, and financial data in one system.
AIP is currently focused on business practices in human resources and finance that will be impacted by Workday. This includes assessing where and how these administrative tasks will get done when Workday launches. AIP works closely with leaders in the Office of Human Resources; Finance; Division of Information Technology (DoIT); Office of Strategic Consulting; and Data, Academic Planning & Institutional Research to support employees who provide administrative services in UW-Madison’s schools, colleges, and divisions.
While AIP’s focus will eventually evolve to include business practices not directly impacted by Workday, we are dedicated to helping our university prepare for this important transformation.
Intended Impact Statement
AIP partners with campus as we navigate the ever-changing higher education environment by:
- Leading people-first innovation,
- Promoting data-informed decision-making and continuous improvement,
- Enabling greater focus on core responsibilities by identifying solutions that increase administrative ease and efficiency.
Team Values and Guiding Principles
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Curiosity
We explore together with our partners to discover and imagine new paths towards learning and action.
We will do this by:
- Leading with curiosity
- Asking questions that explore all aspects of the situation
- Defining the problem, answering the right question
- Allowing for complexity as it emerges
- Making room for both business needs and human experiences
(In)Community
We exist in community. We only succeed when we all succeed together.
We will do this by:
- Centering equity, inclusion, and diversity in our work
- Working collaboratively with each other and with our partners
- Building honest relationships with trust and mutual respect
- Considering impacts of our work on all participants and all who are affected by it
- Allowing for a broad definition of what it means to be successful
Flourishing
We bring warmth and a desire to understand without judgment, to capture authentic experiences and to nurture supportive environments and positive outcomes for our community.
We will do this by:
- Accepting ourselves, our teammates, and our partners as we are and where we’re at
- Demonstrate positive regard and kindness for others (warmth!)
- Listening and asking questions without judgment
- Seek first to understand, then to be understood
Principled
We are dependable and principled partners, earning and retaining trust through integrity.
We will do this by:
- Following through on our commitments with our partners and each other
- Ensuring our words and actions are in alignment (“walk your talk”)
- Creating equitable and inclusive solutions and outcomes serving the broader community
Tenacity
We acknowledge the challenge of our work. We are dedicated to maintaining momentum that moves our work forward and will pivot as needed to address the highest needs of the campus.
We will do this by:
- Embracing failure as a learning opportunity, not being afraid to try
- Understanding the complexity and scope without letting it overwhelm us
- Committing to adapting to challenging circumstances
- Being a resource for each other
Areas of Expertise
AIP works with campus partners to help UW-Madison successfully transition to Workday. AIP’s specific areas of expertise are detailed in the drop-down feature below.
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Assessment of Current Business Practices
AIP talks with your faculty and staff to understand how administrative work gets done in the current environment. We listen for issues that create delays, frustrations, duplicated efforts, and other pain points for your team and/or the people you serve. Our data analysts measure how long it takes to complete certain tasks and use this information to identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and areas for improvement.
We use tools like data dashboards to help leaders and decision-makers understand where improvements can be made to save time and costs, increase efficiencies, and improve the quality of service provided.
Operating Models
Operating models refer to where work happens on campus. The goals of any recommendations for new operating models are to streamline how administrative tasks get done as much as possible to achieve greater efficiencies and higher quality of service. Streamlining where administrative tasks get done (and who does what) can also return time and resources to activities more closely related to your team’s mission.
AIP works with campus partners like the Office of Human Resources and Division of Business Services to evaluate business practices from beginning to end. This helps us understand where hand-offs, redundancies, and/or inconsistencies occur. Our desired outcome is to improve the experience for the individual or team completing the task and the people receiving the service.
Continuous Improvement
Continuous improvement refers to the ongoing effort to make incremental improvements to advancing UW-Madison’s mission. AIP supports the university’s finance and administration strategic priorities by leading a culture of continuous improvement where all employees are empowered to improve the business practices and administrative services that support excellence in teaching, research, public service, and the overall student experience. Improvements can be big changes that happen all at once or smaller efforts that occur incrementally over time. Many times, these improvements require the courage to try something new and a willingness to abandon what does not work.
AIP’s approach to continuous improvement includes leveraging technology, reimagining business practices, using data to make and evaluate decisions, experimenting, learning from peer institutions, brainstorming with campus partners, and leading and supporting our colleagues through change.