Northeastern Illinois University Transformed Its Business Processes. Here's How They Did It

CHICAGO, June 23, 2023 /PRNewswire/ -- Following a rigorous evaluation of financial management systems and more than a year-long implementation, today Northeastern Illinois University is the first public university in Illinois to go live on Workday.

Investing in Workday reaffirms the university's commitment to support faculty and staff to foster a nationally recognized urban university. As a federally designated Hispanic-Serving Institution, this technology was also important to further the university's efforts to bring new programs and grants to truly serve this important and growing population in Chicago. We are proud to be leading the way for other state universities.

Workday was selected following a rigorous evaluation process to unify human capital management, payroll, and analytics to bring the entire campus together under one agile, easy-to-use system—all delivered in the cloud. Northeastern now has a single source for HR and payroll data with built-in, always-on auditing and compliance controls and configurable business processes across its three Chicago locations.

"It was frustrating, but not uncommon, for our Human Resources team to be mired in manual paper processes, trying to answer questions on employee benefits, where candidates were in the recruiting process, or whether faculty was hired for a scheduled course," said Northeastern President Gloria J. Gibson said. "We will continue to improve systems that support our faculty, staff and students."

Northeastern Illinois University is a vibrant learning and research community, with its main campus on the northwest side of Chicago and three additional locations in the area.

Manish Kumar, Vice President of Finance and Administration, who was instrumental in this initiative, said, "It was a mammoth effort to reengineer how we conduct business. Now we can end our inefficient processes, focus on people not paper, and deliver on our mission of providing an exceptional environment for learning, teaching, and scholarship."

"The anticipated savings is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars as we decommission systems and simplify our technology, improve efficiency across HR, payroll and administration, and improve time tracking and accuracy of reporting," Kumar added.

As the newly appointed Executive Director of Human Resources in 2021, Abby Murray discovered that HR was buried in administrative processes and needed an integrated approach to be a more effective with departments across the university. Payroll was at risk of inaccuracy and incompleteness and manual requests slowed down processes that needed greater efficiency. Departments were operating in silos and there was a need for more collaboration with business peers across the university. Data was inaccurate or inaccessible and was needed for making meaningful decisions.

"When I arrived on campus, HR was processing more than 2,700 paper forms yearly," said Abby Murray, Executive Director of Human Resources. "This digital transformation has helped the university move from antiquated systems paper systems to a modernized human capital management (HCM) and payroll solution. In payroll alone, automation has reduced processing time by six hours per week. With access to data, improved payroll accuracy, and better insight into overtime, the university anticipates saving $140,000 to $190,000."

"Campus-wide collaboration and upstream thinking is essential for sustainability in higher education," added Murray. "Through focus groups we learned that the staff loved the university and their jobs, but they didn't love our systems and processes. Involving the wider university community was critical and would help us achieve our goals of improving our systems and processes and deliver a better employee experience."

Workday applications are more cost-effective and faster to deploy than legacy applications but with change extending beyond the technology, change management best practices and principles were recognized as key to long-term success. Northeastern operates with limited resources as do most schools of its size, and its staff needed to maintain legacy systems while implementing the new application and at the same time, prepare every business unit, department, and campus for transformation.

"We now have processes that are consistent across the board while still meeting the needs of each business process owner. The success of the Workday project had to do with our team and external partners – we couldn't have done it without them. In addition to bringing in best practices, greater transparency and more collaboration, our transformation leaves behind a legacy of efficiency and accessibility and modern practices that will benefit students long into the future. We're excited about what we accomplished," Kumar said.

ABOUT NORTHEASTERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY
Northeastern Illinois University offers more than 40 undergraduate degree and certificate programs and more than 50 graduate degree, certificate, licensure and endorsement programs. The Main Campus is located on 67 acres in an attractive residential area on the Northwest Side of Chicago. The University has additional locations in the metropolitan area, including the Jacob H. Carruthers Center for Inner City Studies, El Centro and the University Center of Lake County.

SOURCE NORTHEASTERN ILLINOIS UNIVERSITY