In these episodes of The Innovation Exchange, Workday’s Mark Woollen speaks with leaders from SISSCORP and Strada about how partner-built solutions on the Workday platform help public institutions modernize complex reporting processes while maintaining the accuracy and accountability their stakeholders expect.
Public institutions operate under a level of scrutiny most organizations never face. Funding allocations, financial disclosures, and regulatory submissions must all withstand audit, oversight, and public review.
Universities report enrollment data that determines state funding. Government finance teams publish comprehensive annual reports that show how taxpayer resources are managed. In both cases, the accuracy of those submissions matters not only to regulators, but to the public.
For leaders across the public sector, modernization isn’t only about efficiency. It’s about improving how systems support accuracy, transparency, and accountability.
That challenge sits at the center of two recent episodes of The Innovation Exchange, a Workday podcast exploring partner-led innovation on the Workday platform. In these conversations, Mark Woollen, GVP of partner innovation at Workday, speaks with Michelle Spangler of SISSCORP and Don Harpe of Strada about how purpose-built apps are helping public institutions modernize complex reporting processes while maintaining the rigor those environments require.
Together, the discussions highlight two areas where trust is critical: higher education compliance reporting and government financial reporting.
Higher education institutions operate within a dense regulatory environment. In many U.S. states, public funding depends on how institutions report student enrollment activity, course completion, and academic progress.
These submissions are not simple summaries. Institutions must apply detailed regulatory rules to student records before submitting results to state agencies.
Michelle Spangler, founder of SISSCORP, has spent years working closely with universities navigating these requirements. One of the most common challenges she sees is a misunderstanding of how compliance and reporting relate.
“...many confuse compliance and reporting and think that they're the same thing and they really aren't.” - Michelle Spangler, founder, SISSCORP
Compliance governs how institutions operate within regulatory rules. Reporting demonstrates that those rules have been followed. In practice, however, the two processes often become intertwined.
Many schools keep their compliance data in separate systems. This forces teams to manually check spreadsheets or write custom code just to finish a report. It creates friction, wastes time, and increases the risk of errors. By moving this logic into the core system, reporting becomes a natural part of the workday.
Watch and listen to this full episode on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.
SISSCORP saw an opportunity to ease that challenge when Workday opened its platform to partner-built apps. The result is TEXSISS, a Workday Marketplace app designed for universities using Workday Student in Texas. The app applies state funding rules to enrollment data and supports the generation of the reports required by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board.
For institutions using Workday Student, that alignment matters. Instead of stitching together compliance logic across multiple systems, universities can manage reporting requirements within the same platform that manages student records.
That connection is particularly important in states where enrollment reporting directly influences institutional funding and must withstand regulatory scrutiny. By bringing those processes together, institutions can produce required submissions with greater confidence that the data behind funding decisions is accurate, consistent, and easy to trust.
Public institutions operate under a microscope. For a university finance lead, a single error in a state enrollment report doesn't just mean a messy spreadsheet—it could cost the institution millions in vital funding. In the public sector, modernization isn't a luxury or a quest for efficiency alone. It is the foundation of public trust.
Public sector finance teams are responsible for producing comprehensive annual financial reports that demonstrate how taxpayer resources are managed. These reports bring together financial statements, schedules, and narrative explanations that auditors, regulators, and citizens rely on to evaluate fiscal accountability.
Producing them has traditionally been a time-consuming process. Many organizations still assemble these reports through extensive spreadsheet workflows, manual reconciliations, and document formatting that can stretch across weeks.
Don Harpe, partner at Strada has worked with many public sector finance teams navigating this process. The operational burden, he notes, often falls on small finance teams responsible for ensuring both accuracy and audit readiness.
“Once it's into the system, there's no chance for a formula error or somebody to overlook a specific segment.” Don Harpe, Strada
Strada developed Automated ACFR, a Workday Marketplace app designed to help public sector organizations generate their Annual Comprehensive Financial Reports directly from financial data within Workday.
Watch and listen to this full episode on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.
Instead of assembling reports through disconnected tools, finance teams can work within the same environment where the underlying financial transactions already reside.
For public institutions, the benefit goes beyond efficiency. Connecting financial reporting directly to Workday Financials strengthens the transparency and accountability that public sector reporting is meant to provide.
Across both conversations, a common theme emerges: Modernization in the public sector is most effective when operational systems and reporting requirements complement each other and evolve together.
Separate tools force teams to waste hours checking data. When you build compliance directly into your main system, reporting becomes automatic. It turns a stressful deadline into a natural part of the workday. This shift lets leaders stop looking backward at errors and start looking forward at strategy.
For universities, that means aligning student data with the regulatory rules that govern funding. For government finance teams, it means ensuring that financial reports reflect the same data used to run day-to-day operations.
In both cases, modernization strengthens trust when it improves the connection between systems, data, and accountability.
The solutions discussed in these episodes share an important characteristic: they are built directly on the Workday platform.
That design allows organizations to extend their existing workflows without introducing additional systems or duplicating data. Marketplace apps operate within the same security model, data foundation, and user experience teams already rely on.
For public institutions navigating modernization, that approach offers a path forward where innovation and accountability evolve together.
Explore more partner-built apps, agents, integrations, and services on Workday Marketplace to see how organizations are extending the Workday platform while keeping trust at the center.
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