History
Workday Adaptive Planning facilitates integrated financial planning to create budgets, in-year forecasts, scenario analysis, and other financial models. Iowa State University implemented Workday Adaptive Planning Phase 1 in April 2020. An ISU project team partnered with Huron consultants to design and develop the application configuration. Phase 1 included planning for university general fund revenues and expenses, integrating Workday Finance Foundation Data Model (FDM) elements, and a driver-based compensation model integrating Workday HCM positions and Workday Finance employee costing allocations. The Phase 1 scope of work was intentionally kept narrow to ensure a successful implementation under a short timeline. At the same time, a roadmap was developed for future expansion of the application to meet the broader goals of the university and ensure efficient use of all resources available to the university over a range of years.
Required Updates to Adaptive Planning
The Controller’s Office has updated the Workday FDM structure to provide greater financial control and accurate, consistent reporting. This project is ongoing with additional changes expected to occur in early FY2025. These changes will require configuration changes within Adaptive Planning to ensure that the FY2026 general fund budget is developed consistent with the updated FDM structure. In addition, Workday Adaptive Planning has undergone significant application changes since the ISU implementation, with extended capabilities that were unavailable. This has resulted in the need to adjust the ISU configuration to leverage these capabilities and align with current best practices.
Roadmap - Phase 2
In addition to the required updates to Adaptive Planning, the proposed roadmap for Phase 2 also includes establishing the full capability and configuration to plan all university funds. This capability includes projecting all existing fund balances under an annual budget and in-year forecast process. Underlying processes would be established with the support of ISU senior leadership.
Additionally, Phase 2 will support tuition and mandatory fee projection models to automate a seamless, efficient, and interactive experience for both central Financial Planning and Analysis and the colleges. Finally, Phase 2 incorporates “what-if” planning to allow for institutional modeling through quicker and deeper insights based on the planning parameters provided. The full roadmap is provided below. Only Phase 2 is under SOW consideration at this time.
