Workday Podcast: Tailgating and Talking Tech with LSU and Texas A&M

Shawna Ward: It's college football season, and there's no better way to spend a sunny Saturday than at a tailgate. That's why it's so great to be here at College Station, Texas, on an October and Saturday for a matchup between the LSU Tigers and the Texas A&M Aggies. May the best team on the field win. But you know where LSU and A&M are on the same sideline? It's as two fantastic Workday customers. I'm Shawna Ward, Account Executive for Higher Education at Workday. Joining us today on the Workday podcast are Brad Blair, Executive Director at the Texas A&M University System, and Allie Prest, Organizational Change Manager and Training Lead at LSU. Brad and Allie, thank you so much for joining us today on Workday's Forever Forward bus, where we're doing a little tailgating of our own. Excited for the game?

Allie Prest: Absolutely.

Brad Blair: Absolutely excited. You bet

Prest: Yeah, it's great to be here.

Blair: Great to be here. We have two teams, right? Both ranked--

Prest: Yeah.

Blair: --both undefeated in--

Prest: Absolutely.

Blair: --their conference. So it's going to be a fantastic game[JK1] .

Ward: I'm told this is the biggest party in the country today. [laughter]

Blair: I think so. I hope so.

Ward: All right. Well, walk me through each of your backgrounds,  as well as your current roles at LSU and A&M System.

Prest: Yeah, sure. So I'll jump right in.  I actually started my career teaching, and I taught middle and high school for a little while. All of my degrees are in education,  , and I kinda worked my way to LSU, started as a counselor, worked my way up,  , did my doctorate-- a lot of doctorate coursework in,  , higher ed, and change management, and sort of was melding these two worlds, became an assistant dean, and then most recently was an assistant dean in the College of Ag at LSU. And that is actually how I ended up in this position because I started working with the implementation for Workday Student a couple of years ago, representing the assistant deans on campus. And then the role just started morphing, and this opportunity arose, and I jumped at it. And so that's my 30-second intro of how I got to where I am now.

Blair: Excellent. Mine is completely different. [laughter] So I am the Executive Director of IT Shared Services at the Texas A&M University System. I've been here about nine years at this point, and I would say nine exciting years. So prior to joining the A&M System, I did about 15 years with a consulting company various different roles, but really focused on ERP implementations as well as the operational and maintenance piece of ERP. So excited to have a conversation today.

Ward: Awesome. Thanks for sharing. Now, higher education system is going through a lot of change. So football aside, we're seeing a lot more competition. We're seeing,  , shifting d-demographics, changing expectations with students, more competition with the private sector for talent. So what changes are you seeing and how is modern technology helping you adapt and become more competitive at your respective institutions?

Blair: Yeah, I'll take that one first.

Prest: Okay.

Blair: I think we can both agree that there's more change going on with higher ed now than we've ever seen.  , one of the biggest things is higher ed is in a position where they really have to prove the value of their existence.

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: And that's the value with the parents who be might-- who might be making a decision to bring their children to the institution, but also of the students themselves who are making a decision to spend quite a bit of money to go into higher education. So I think more so than ever, we're seeing where students are-- they're really looking at, "Do I go straight into the workforce or do I make a move to go into higher education?" And we know with COVID, right? So four years ago with COVID, we really saw where re-enrollment just simply didn't occur. And we've been battling that for the last four years. I think that's been across higher education. And really, this year was the first year we saw that normalize. Uh, our bigger institutions didn't have as much of an issue, but when you look at our regional institutions, they absolutely did. So there's a couple of things that I think we need to do in higher ed to remain competitive.  , one of those is we cannot run from artificial intelligence, and we can't be too restrictive with it. We have to embrace it. And so that means we have to bring artificial intelligence into our curriculum. Our students have to learn it. It has to be something that is part of the coursework that they're completing and that we're preparing them to join the workforce. the other item, I think, that's most important, and we're going to really see how we educate students shift.

Blair: And with that, I mean, we're going to have to look at what are the industry certifications that exist. So not only are you coming to get a bachelor's degree, but throughout your tenure at the university, you're working on the certifications that are going to prepare you for the workforce. And part of that is partnering with those institutions that offer those certifications. The other is partnering with the organizations themselves, the employers. So I look at it a little bit like the GI Bill, right? If you make a commitment to an organization, then they're likely going to support and fund at least a portion of your tuition and maybe all of it. And when you come out, not only do you have a job with that institution, but you've learned critical skill sets. So we're avoiding the, I have a bachelor's degree sheet of paper, I show up for my first day of work, and I don't know any more than I did when I came out of high school. So I see that shifting as we educate our students.

Ward: Yeah. So interesting.

Prest: Yeah. I, I love that answer. And, and I think it, it plays well into kinda what I was thinking around that, which is, the competition is stemming from-- at the root of it, we're all trying to do the same thing, right? And so if we're trying to put those better citizens out into the world and at the same time, attract the best quality faculty and the research dollars, that's a finite resource in and of itself. And so you think about this immense challenge that universities are facing. It's this dynamic interplay between technological advances and societal expectations. And gosh, I mean, just the, the reality fiscally of what universities and students are both facing at the same time. And, and how do you balance all three of those things? And so in addition to that, we've got this 2025 enrollment cliff that, that we're all facing with students, right? And the--

Blair: Yup.

Prest: At some point, we run out of the n ber of heads. And so then it's, it's, "Okay, we, we really want to attract that talent." And so if you bring it back to, "We can't exist in these archaic systems like we have for so long in higher ed." And for so long, higher ed said, "Okay, here's your piece of paper. You are now ready to go into the world." And conversely, industry said that was okay too.

Blair: Mm-hmm.

Prest: Well, now industry has become so much savvier and is saying, "Well, actually, do I care about the piece of paper or is it the skill that you have? Is it the experience you're bringing with you?" And so for us at, at LSU, I think one of the things that we really are hoping to do is explore AI in a meaningful way.  , our provost has students every semester in a dedicated course where they are developing AI-driven tools and trying to just expand anywhere we can into that space so that our students are walking away with knowledge of not only,  , what AI can do, but they have done it, and they can exhibit that--

Blair: Yeah.

Prest: --to a potential--

Blair: They can apply it, right?

Prest: Right, right.

Ward: Yeah.

Prest: It's not just like, "Oh, I c-- I conceptually understand it," but rather, "I've done it. I've built a model. I know how to train a model," you know?  , and so I think that, that the goal then becomes - coming back to the competition piece - if you embrace AI, if you find ways to embrace technological advances, then in theory, you're freeing up anyone from those more mundane tasks and you're creating the space where higher ed should thrive, which is creative, thought-provoking. Let peoples live in those spaces and not in the just, "I checked the boxes, and so now I have my piece of paper."

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: Yeah. And, and, and even so, so I have a son who is in higher education. He's a sophomore here at A&M. And I'm seeing more and more as I talk to him and I talk to his friends, they're questioning the same thing.

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: So it's not just the administrators that are seeing this. These are the kids that know nothing about the enrollment cliff-

Ward: Right. Mm-hmm.

Blair: --know nothing else. But they're questioning, "Why am I not in the workforce--

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: --doing these things? Am I learning the appropriate things, particularly in my first couple of years of school," right?

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: "I learned all that in high school." So all of that is going to have to adapt and change to attract those students into our institutions.

Ward: Yeah.

Prest: Yeah.

Ward: Absolutely. So while we're on the AI topic, let's just keep going there. Where are you guys seeing, you know, increased efficiencies or gaining more insight or improving the experience by using AI in your institutions?

Blair: All right. So first of all--

Ward: Yeah.

Blair: --so I, I don't know if you watched the Super Bowl--

Ward: Yeah, Uh-huh.

Blair: --this past year. But there was a beverage company commercial. I won't name what it was. And this train shot through all the walls, right? That's exactly what artificial intelligence is. Uh, we're seeing the adoption of AI be faster than anything else that we've seen in technology thus far, right?  , it is multiples faster than the adoption of cell phones, for instance. So we're seeing it move forward very quickly.  , and this means that we need to embrace again. We have to embrace AI. We can't look at AI and say, "Ah, that's not something our students should be utilizing," right? We have to put it in the things that we do on a daily basis, which means we have to stay current and we have to understand what artificial intelligent is and how it's evolving as we move forward. But most importantly, I think we have to ensure that we have policies in place that protect our data--

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: --right? And we have to educate both our employees as well as our students on what does that mean. So just recently, I had the opportunity to spend some time with our chief human resources officers. And so we have 22 institutions across the A&M System. So we have 22 CHROs. And so we got together and we really had a conversation of what does AI mean to them? And when I looked at how versed--

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: --our CHROs were in AI, it really ran the spectrum. We had individuals that have done nothing absolutely with it. And then we had individuals that were using it on a daily basis for work activities that they had. When we look at it, we see artificial intelligence being the most beneficial in those task in which they're resource-intensive or they're data-intensive, right? There's a lot of analysis that has to take place, and you have to summarize that data very quickly. So one of the pieces of that for us is recruiting--

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: --that we think it's going to be most beneficial. Uh, again, if you talk about the enrollment challenges that we face that have a direct correlation to budget constraints that we also face, it means we have to be more efficient in the work that we're doing on a daily basis. And recruiting is part of that. So we have to target individuals. We can no longer put a requisition out or post a position and say, "We hope we get the right candidates that come and apply for that position." We have to know they're gonna the have the right skill sets, and we have to know they're interested in working in higher education.

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: Not everyone is.

Ward: Yep.

Blair: So if we can target those individuals that have applied before, right? Then we know they already have interest and that can streamline the process that we have. So outside of HR, within academics, there are also a couple of areas that we're targeting for this.  , one, I spoke about, embedding the AI in one-- in the curriculum  that we have for our students, but also we're leveraging it for tutoring as well as advisement, right? So those are areas in which we can teach the tools. You consider generative AI. It can learn. We can teach those tools. And they can actually do the work that employees are doing today. And that's, again, that's resource-intensive work. A lot of it is repetitive. So it doesn't mean we replace those employees, but we reposition those employees with new skill sets. And we're gonna see that continue in the workforce. So you also ask about challenges. And I'm sure Allie will weigh in on this also. It's never-ending on the challenges regarding artificial intelligence. The first I mentioned, and that's the security piece--

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: --you have to be able to protect your data. The second is educating employees and our students.  , so one of those things is, if you look at AI bias, you need to have an understanding of what that is. So as we teach these tools, they're using data and decisions from human beings. So inherently, there's going to be bias that's part of the decisions that are submitted back.

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: So  there's a human component that has to be a part of anything that's utilized for artificial intelligence. You have to review the response that is--

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: --provided back and make a decision on how you're going to use that. And then the last item is academic integrity. So when you look at artificial intelligence, at what point have you gone too far? At what point is the tool doing everything for the human being? Uh, the same is true if you look at researchers or if you look at students and you consider intellectual property, at what point does the tool own it versus the person, right? But it's critical that you put policies in place that provide those guardrails that allow for that innovation, but also protect the data. And people know a tool where there's an agreement in which it's okay to put protected data in this tool, but this tool, you can only put the private data.

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Prest: Yeah. And I think that's really-- uh, a lot of that speaks to where we're going to see the hesitation to really embrace AI, right? We-- especially when we think about our faculty and the faculty trying to figure out where's the appropriate place to put this in my classroom to where a student isn't using, you know, a tool to write their paper? And, and how can the faculty understand those-- the tools well enough to feel comfortable then explaining it to a student? And to your point, that this is all happening so quickly [laughter] that nobody really has had time to sit back and think about-- I mean, we're trying to think about governance around protecting data or how to use it in the classroom, but it's just happening so fast. And so I think that really is where I would hope that higher ed and, and administrators are able to take a step back and just realize this is not going away. So take, take some resource, take some time to, to go ahead and figure out how you're gonna use it. And what is your governance model gonna be around it? Because it's not going away.

Prest: And, and so, I mean, I think, obviously, there's always going to be, uh, an initial sort of knee, knee-jerk reaction to new technology of, "Oh, this is going to replace jobs." And, and I absolutely don't think it will, especially in the higher ed space because we, we always are short on people. We never have enough people--

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: Mm-hmm.

Prest: And I think really being focused on those individual time-saving aspects. I mean, even the search feature in Workday being powered with AI and it's quicker on what it thinks you're looking for. Well, that five seconds over the course of a week, if you're doing that, you know, 50 times a day, you're saving time. And, and you, you don't even necessarily articulate the time you've saved, but it's, it's powering that, that better efficiency,  , for the users.

Prest: Yep.

Ward: So AI is such a great example of where we're seeing a technology advancement being adopted or at least highly talked about.

Prest: Mm-hmm.

Ward: Conversely, it's astounding how many institutions are still on legacy systems or mainframe systems. Why is digital transformation so hard in higher education? And what were those deciding factors in your institutions to decide to adopt modern technology? And Allie, I'll let you take this one first.

Prest: Yeah, sure. So near and dear to my heart, uh, LSU is, is on a legacy mainframe system. When I started working there in 2009, and somebody showed me the ropes of that job, and we pulled up that screen, I said, "You've got to be kidding me. [laughter] This looks like it's 1982." And it was not.  , and we're still using it today for our student, uh, systems. And so it's-- I think that the, the need to move away from legacy systems, obviously, is, is not,  , unusual in the sense that it's just a matter of embracing the new technology. Also, the people who can maintain those systems would like to retire. So you know, at some point, you, you have to move away. I do think that there's been a challenge in the higher ed space from the student side to really find products that meet the needs of the university. One of the things about, uh, a legacy system is you customized that 100%--

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Prest: --to what you needed at that point in time and what your people were doing, and you know, your programmers could build it exactly how you wanted it. Well, the reality of technology today and going into, uh, a different kind of software is-- that's just not how that works. I don't get to say what happens next on my phone, you know? I mean, they're gonna put something on my phone and I better get used to it. And so I think that that's, uh, a challenge in higher ed is just how do you even find systems that can meet the needs that you have? We are seeing more opportunities now, more software. The embracing of the modern technology is incredibly challenging simply because people are moving away from something that was homegrown, specific for their needs, and they're very comfortable with it.

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Prest: And many people are averse enough to change that even if they know the outcome of the other item is better, they would rather live with what they have because they know how to manipulate that and that's where they're comfortable. And so I think that, you know, again, our deciding factors to, to move for us to Workday Student,  , was simply because we realized that the experience we were delivering to students is not obviously what we would like to deliver. And so we are moving to a system that will, will help us better do that, but also just-- you can only stay on the mainframe legacy system so long, and we have to embrace the technology.

Blair: Yeah, I'm always amazed, you know, every time I talk to another higher ed institution, just switch the name and the story [crosstalk]-- [laughter]

Ward: Right.

Blair: --right? I mean-- I mean, it's true.

Ward: Yep.

Blair: The, the other thing I see is articulating the value of what that new technology is.

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: --right? We talked about how fast technology is moving, how quickly it is changing. If we're only thinking a year or two out, we're making mistakes. We better be thinking a decade out of what we're providing. How are we making experiences better for our employees and our students?  , so for us, a couple of things, when we chose Workday HCM, which we're an HCM client here at the A&M System, and we have been since 2018. So we got six years almost under our belt at this point. But we were really looking for a partner not only that would provide innovation, but that would force it, right? Because we're slow to move within higher education. And if I have to spend a significant amount of time garnering buy-in, it's difficult. We don't change quickly. The battleship doesn't turn. So we needed a partner that was going to force that innovation. And we see that with Workday.  , we also needed someone that was going to allow us to scale. So when we went live with Workday, we had 21 members. We have 22 members now. My hope is we continue to grow. So again, if we're looking out 10 years or longer, we need a system that's going to hang with us during that period to allow that growth that we're looking for. And we also needed one in which our costs were predictable, right? We didn't want to do an expensive implementation two or three years later. We get to do it again to get to the next best version to take advantage of that new technology. Uh, and with Workday, we see that with the semi-annual releases. We actually see it weekly, right--

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: --when those things happen.

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: But it keeps us on the latest version. It keeps the latest technology available to us.

Prest: And I'm going to jump in there because I--

Blair: Please do.

Prest: --love that. No, I love what you said. We've been on HCM /FIN since 2016. And I, I hadn't thought about it in that way, but the force-- like the forcing, the gentle forcing, [laughter] a nudge, you might say,  , of, of keeping up with the latest technology and, and advances within the product. The semi-annual releases, it's, it's almost a blessing, in a way, to be able to tell people, "Sorry, we don't have a choice." Because it's not a bad thing. It's just a change. It's--

Ward: Right.

Prest: --just a new way. It's maybe an alteration to the way you're doing a process, but it's because it's making something more efficient. And to your point, there are many, many people in higher ed who - anywhere, I'm sure - if they can say no to change, they would prefer [laughter] to say no to change--

Ward: Yeah.

Prest: --right? Because it-it's just-- again, it's that challenge of doing something a little differently. And so having, having a partner that-that's, that's, uh, bringing you along with you-- along with them,  , is, is definitely a blessing in disguise. I just wanted to jump in 'cause I loved the way you phrased that.

Blair: Yeah, I agree. And you know, when you talk about the semi-annual releases, so we just went through one--

Prest: Mm-hmm.

Blair: --a month ago. And we, we started to have conversations of, "Do we even tell anyone at this point?" I mean, literally--

Prest: Yeah.

Blair: --that's where we are because our releases, I, I can't think of one thing in six years that went wrong to the point, right, that it was extremely disruptive to our organization. It simply has not occurred. So we do videos, we communicate, we spend all this time, and then we pull metrics to see how many people watched our videos, all this stuff. And we're trying to figure out, I don't know. You don't know when your phone--

Ward: Right.

Blair: --updates, it's really quick and it happens and you don't say anything-- you don't hear anything else about it--

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: --and somehow you figure it out. So we're trying to make that determination of, "Are we there?" And we don't want our stakeholders to be reliant on us telling them--

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: --we want them to adapt to whatever that change may be to make it easier on us and them--

Ward: Yeah.

Blair: --so.

Ward: So speaking of change, with any technology deployment, change is hard. But it's especially hard in higher education, just given the nature of how institutions are set up. There's colleges and schools within an institution. They all operate uniquely in their own way, compounded by the different populations we serve, right? Staff, faculty, students, al ni. So can you talk more about those challenges of change management? And through the deployments each of you have led, you know, what advice could you share with others?

Prest: Yeah. So,  , I'll speak to that, doing exactly the change management piece on our workday student implementation currently, but also reflecting just on,  , prior experiences as well. If I'm speaking about LSU A&M, near and dear to my heart, obviously, I'm speaking about our general campus, but that also includes the vet school, the law school, our graduate school, in addition to all of our undergraduate colleges on campus. For our Workday Student implementation, we're doing a multi-institution implementation. So that also includes LSU Eunice, LSU Shreveport, LSU of Alexandria. So now we're out to four institutions,  , each with their own policies and procedures and everything. And so trying to herd those cats can be very challenging at times.  , and also being respectful of, of everybody's policies and procedures. Nobody wants anybody to come in and say, "Oh, well, you're doing that wrong. Oh, well, you need to do it this way." And so change, change management and moving to a different system is, is incredibly challenging if you're doing it for one perfect, you know, insular group. When you're having to do it for so many different people,  , it becomes even more immensely challenging.

Prest: So we have really tried to approach change management,  , carefully in the sense that-- speaking to this implementation specifically, the-- and this is by design, with Workday's implementation design, we have taken our time. Uh, there has been-- uh, this project is two and a half years in at this point,  , of spending so much time on the design stages and, and really going through and peeling the layers of the onion to make sure that we were-- we were bringing this along and meeting the needs of all, all four institutions,  , as we were building these items and as we were making sure that the system was gonna be configured the way we needed it to work.  , and certainly, it-- uh, to your point, it takes a lot of resource to do that and to do it right. You know-- you know you need this to work right. And so we have a fantastic implementation team that has dedicated thousands of hours to the project. I did a calculation for a presentation the other day and, and just our project team, if we count our core, it's about 35 people who have really been on this day-to-day. We're in the 40,000-hour mark at this point of the amount of hours that they have put in--

Ward: Wow.

Prest: --meetings and to this project, dedicated time to this project.  , and it-- but I think that that's important. And the reason I did that calculation was because when I then go out on the road, we call it my road shows, talking to leaders or talking to different groups on, on the different campuses to say, "None of this was, was overnight. You, you may not have had the awareness around this that this was happening, but here's how much your colleagues have done." And so the way that we've approached change management on this project, we have a fantastic partner with Deloitte.  , we are-- we are enjoying having them on this project with us. They are helping us drive change management. We've approached it as transparently as we absolutely can. So I mentioned that some of my doctoral coursework was in,  , change management. And one of the-- one of the theories that always resonated with me is about resistance to change. And he has three levels, which always crack me up because this just is so higher ed, right? So it's, "I don't get it. I don't like it. I don't like you." [laughter]  And it--

Blair: So true. [laughter]

Prest: Right? And so the, the day I read that in a class, I was like, "Oh my God, this is everything."  , but-- so everything I do when, when we're working on projects or when we're working on delivering, uh, a-- you know, a comms piece or whatever, that's how I approach it. I know that many people, many people in my audience on campus who I know personally, that's how their brain works. It's automatically,  , questioning and not loving, finding ways to pick apart whatever it is I'm going to tell them. And so if we think through each of those steps, I don't get it. Well, really and truly, on a college campus, that's probably not the problem. There's a lot of smart people on college campuses. It's not that they don't get it. It's that they probably don't like it because they don't like the change part of it, right? They-- again, back to wanting to use their mainframe system that they can do blindfolded. It's, it's the, "I don't think I like this. I don't want to do this change. You're telling me I have to do this change. I have no choice. I just don't like it." And then if you can convince them that, "Hey, actually, this is a good thing, and this is going to make your life easier. And look at the student experience and how much better that's going to be," then it's, "Well, maybe I just don't like you." [laughter] You know, it's, it's-- and I think that that is not an intentional reaction. But I do think for faculty and staff very often on college campuses, they experience a lot of turnover in leadership. They experience a lot of,  , sort of random initiatives that crop up. "And what's the buzzword this year? And now we've got to do this thing, and stop what you're doing over here because that was our strategic vision then, but now it's this."

Prest: And so I think they're in-- you know, they're sort of worn out by that, honestly. And it's, it's questioning, "What is the person who's bringing this to me? What are their intentions? Are they actually doing this for the right reasons, or is it because it's the latest buzzword?" And so fortunately, for me, in this role, I've been on campus since 2009. I have friends all over campus. People know that I usually don't mince words, and it's been a blessing taking on this position because everybody knows that I can speak with a level of understanding. And I think that that's a key piece in higher ed change management specifically is having people who can vouch for the legitimacy of whatever it is you're talking about with change because they're coming from, uh, a place of understanding. And I think that that, for me, is really,  , the advice piece, is making sure that you have people involved in your change management who actually understand what the impacts are going to be for the people on that campus so that they can speak to those things. And don't-- they aren't making people feel like it's just an outsider saying, "This is gonna be great," when they actually have no idea.

Blair: Yeah. Good points. So one, change fatigue is real--

Prest: Yes.

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: --right? You mentioned that. We, we see it all the time. And, and as Allie stated, we do see a lot of leadership changes. Es-especially in the academic side of higher education, we see that change, and everyone's coming in with a new initiative, right? I have my new plan, and that-- I'm going to make something of myself--

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: --and we're going to be better. And so everyone else has to adapt to that. But organizational change management in and of itself is also just hard, right? It's extremely hard. And I think it's even harder within higher education because although we see those leadership changes frequently, if we really look at our employee populations, they stay there a long time. Higher education offers stability to their employees. And so we see employees with 20, 30, 40. I saw one this year that had 50 years of--

Prest: Oh, gosh.

Blair: --tenure within our organization. So these are individuals that have done the same job many times for decades.

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: And some of these people have built an entire career around the application, right? Their whole career is centered around what that is. So when you come in to change, it's not just changing the application. It's changing their world, right?

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: "I don't know what I'm gonna do 'cause I've done this for 30 years," right?

Prest: Yeah.

Blair: "And I'm going to have to learn something new. No way, right, am I doing that." And so inherently, that resistance to change is strong within higher education. So within our HCM implementation of Workday, one of the things we recognized early on, again, with 21 institutions at the time, is our project team alone can't handle it. There's just absolutely no way. Those institutions are distributed across the state. And in Texas, you know, you could be four hours. You could be 14 hours, and you're still within Texas.  , so we set up a Change Champion program. And I know that's not unique to the A&M System. I know most of our institutions do that. They go through a large,  , conversion of some sort with it. But it was important for us to do that. And it's really for the reasons that you said, Allie, because it puts someone that was boots on the ground at that institution that was respected by the other employees and/or students of that institution. So not only did they hear from the project team, but they heard from the person that they trusted, right? To really push what that change was.

Blair: So it was our responsibility to provide them updates on how the project was going, updates on what the product was doing, and even provide them materials, right? We provided them all the materials so they--

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: --could go back to their institutions and they could communicate the status of everything.  , and when I reflect on that, I think we did a pretty good job with them. Could have always done-- we can always do better, but I think we did a pretty solid job with them. When I look at, you know, and now again, six years of doing things, what would we do differently for that? There are a couple of things.  , one of those is I would put the product in the hands of the administrator and the end user way sooner than what we did. We didn't do it really until user acceptance testing--

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: --was the first time that our administrators and our end users had the opportunity-- and mostly administrators in that case, had the opportunity to stick their hands in the system, run through business processes. Way too late for us.  , and as IT professionals, which I'm an IT professional, we're leery about providing the product to someone until all the enhancements are completed and it's your data, right? We, we assume the person isn't really gonna understand the product. I simply think that's wrong, uh, and we can't think that way any longer. So anyone that's going through an implementation or considering Workday, I would say put the product in the hands of your administrators and end users as early as you possibly can.

Blair: The other that I would encourage is,  , investment in training and investment in support. So any large implementation, you're going to do multiple rounds of training with your end users.  , and we did that. It still was not enough, right? We should have-- we should have invested more in the training itself to get the end users up to speed. And, and really, I say end users. Really, it was our administrators. The end users, Workday is intuitive, they compre-- they knew how to submit their time card. They knew how to find their paycheck. They knew how to submit a payment election or direct deposit. Outside of that-- and, and request time off. [laughter] Outside of that, unless it's an annual enrollment, right, an open enrollment that you're having, they don't really care about anything else in the system. So it's really those administrators that are going to be processing, you know, changes in positions and things like that that you need to make sure they're comfortable with it. And so that brings me to one of the things we did, but we had to pivot 'cause we made a late decision knowing we were behind the curve of where we needed to be. And that was to put coaches at our institutions.  , so the best thing that you can do is, those change champions, those advocates for the change at your institution that are going to be your administrators, make them look good, right? Put them in a position that if they're trying to figure something out on day one, someone can answer their question and keep them going 'cause it lowers their frustration, right? And so therefore, they don't hate the person.

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: They don't hate the change, at least not as much if you put them in that position. And it also makes them look good to whomever it is that they're helping, right? 'Cause things continue to move just like it did before as part of what that is.  , so that would be my advice for those, you know, reflecting back now with six years of experience.

Ward: All right. So Brad, you successfully deployed Workday HCM and Payroll at 21 institutions across the system at the time. Uh, you did that on time and under budget, which is just incredible. So what kind of lessons did you learn,  , from that experience that you can share?

Blair: Yeah. So we get asked this question a lot. And I-I'm sure Allie does the same thing. First, it was a big team that were successful in doing this. And we had a fabulous team with our partners at Workday, also our partners in Deloitte for this.  , we could not have asked for better support.  , so really, it was a team effort to allow us to get to that point.  , but over the six years, what we try to do is we try to give back to others that may be on their Workday journey, right? So we're a Workday community. We take that seriously. We try to support each other as part of that. So any opportunity we have to meet with other organizations that are either in the process or considering the process, we love to take the opportunity because we had so many other institutions help us and guide us for decisions that we have in place today, right? So very beneficial for that. But a couple of things that I, I do think are important. The first one is, and this is something that was told to us that I'm gonna pass along again,  , the institution has to own their implementation. The integrator cannot own it for you. The individual or the company that owns the product cannot own it for you.

Blair: So absolutely, you're gonna engage with a partner that you trust from an integration standpoint, and you're going to engage in one that hopefully has done this process multiple times, right? They know where the skeletons lie--

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: --and you can either mitigate them or you can avoid them completely as part of that process.  , but for us, how we did it is from day one, we had our leads within our implementation team, specifically our functional leads, even from the design phase, lead every single meeting that we had. So they were the face of our implementation to all of our stakeholders, all of our end users.  , and that was intentional and strategic. We wanted them to be viewed as the experts. We didn't want our integrator that we knew in two years was going to depart and go to an-another implementation,  , to be that face.  , we knew these individuals were going to stay for a period of time, and we wanted that trust to evolve very early on. So you have to own your implementation. You cannot pass that off to anyone else. You have to be invested in what that-- what that is. The second is define-- and this is going to be two parts. One is define what your success is and communicate it.

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: So that when you get there, you're in agreement with all of your stakeholders that it was successful. And it wasn't something you thought versus what they think, right? You define it clearly upfront and you communicate it, communicate it, communicate it so that they know. And then the other, and this is something that we did not do, that we should have done, is capture metrics from your legacy system. How long does it take to do a process? How many people are involved in that process? How many steps are in that process? You will use those metrics to help determine your success and even prove that success to some of those that may be resistant to what that change is.  , you know, the one thing I can guarantee that you're going to hear when you go live is there are going to be anecdotal feelings, right? [laughter] They're gonna be there and they're--

Ward: Yep.

Blair: --gonna come strong as part of your implementation. And the only way to counter those feelings is with facts.

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: And if you have the metrics from your prior system that you can compare to how you're doing, you can either prove that you've made an improvement or you have an area of focus that you need to work on to, you know, improve and at least get to where you were, if not better. And then you can communicate that improvement back.  , so those are really the three areas that we've learned that if individuals own their own implementation, capture metrics and define success, those are key items to be successful withuman implementation.

Ward: Yeah.

Prest: I love that. Uh, it's funny. Uh, we actually st bled into one of those recently with the capturing metrics on your current system.  , we were speaking with a group and somebody asked a question and said, you know-- basically, just hearsay, not even sure how they would have come up with it because they hadn't been in the system working, but alluding to the fact that something was going to be harder in a new system than it was in our current legacy system. And we, we were sort of you know, kind of flying by the seat of our pants to respond, but it was-- it led us to a comms plan to highlight some of the changes to say, "Look at what you had to do before in the-- in the le--" It wasn't even that it was capable of, of being processed in the legacy system, but rather it was, you have to do a step in the legacy system and then fill out a form and attach that PDF to it. You know, I mean, it was a multi-step that now actually will be automated in Workday Student. But it led us to this great comms plan to highlight a feature that's gonna improve for, for people. And we have not done, you know, anything more in-depth to really capture those legacy steps. But I wholeheartedly agree with that and love that idea and would pass that along to anybody because it's, it's, uh, it's something that you can then use and you don't argue with-- well, uh, you shouldn't argue with facts.

Blair: It's difficult. [laughter]

Prest: Yeah, I know. It gets more challenging--

Ward: Makes it hard.

Prest: --to argue with the facts.

Ward: Yeah.

Prest: So love that.

Ward: Yeah. So that's a great point. Capturing those metrics is a really good way to prove value of a deployment. And it's so important, right, that we're proving that value in big technology deployments, especially big Workday deployments. What other impacts have you seen across your campuses, uh, that have been using Workday?

Prest: Yeah. So I mentioned that we went live with HCM and Fin in 2016. Uh, I think for us-- for me, selfishly, the hu-- the, the largest impact is the fact that we did that prior to now going live with Workday Student this spring. So people have done this before. So this is not a brand new process for us on campus.  , but, but reflecting back on the 2016 implementation, I would say it's-- it truly is just being able to talk about those efficiencies, right? Talking about moving away from paper forms, having automated processes, and, and truly on the student side, we're still-- we still have some forms that have to be filled out on paper. We still have some, some different procedures.  , grade changes comes to mind. Right now, it's a multi-step process that many people have to touch. And we're looking at being able to automate those processes and have that at somebody's fingertips. And, and one of the things that's really so exciting about our move to Workday Student is you don't necessarily have to be sitting at your desk to process something that comes through to you because you can just pull it up on your phone.

Blair: Exactly.

Prest: And you can approve from there, you know? And those types of things for me, when we just talk about the people side of it, that's the impact, is, is doing a better job of,  , not tying people to a workstation because that's the only place you can process your work.  , so that-- those are the types of things that we're super excited about. And then obviously, from the student standpoint, I mean, oh, my gosh, we're revolutionizing what their experience will be at LSU. So,  , that for us is the value.

Blair: So I said before, we went live in 2018. So we're a couple of years behind LSU. We did visit LSU though and [laughter] have conversations. So again, the Workday community is real.

Ward: Yeah.

Prest: Yup.

Blair: And work through that. But we-- you know, when we were looking at making the change, there were a couple of decision points for that.  , we looked at one was just cost and the other was risk. So I said earlier, we were on a mainframe-based legacy system, 35 years in the making, customized--

Prest: Yep.

Blair: --for 35 years, did everything under the  umbrella, right? And so part of the change that we saw also was it was intentional, but it was, "I used to be able to do that. Yeah, but you shouldn't have been able to do that." [laughter] And we intentionally fixed it, right, as part of making that move.  , but for us, moving to Workday HCM really paved the way for us to move off our mainframe. It wasn't the only application that we had on the mainframe, but it was one of the largest ones that we had. And so we were able to decommission our mainframe in 2022. So a few years after we went live with HCM, but that was really the trigger that got us going to shift everything off. And there's a cost savings tied to that. And the risk that Allie discussed earlier, you know, COBOL programmers--

Prest: Mm-hmm.

Blair: --natural programmers, unless you're rehiring your retirees, they're few and far--

Prest: Yep.

Blair: --between, right?

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: To find someone that you're confident with for that. Uh, the other is, you know, looking for a modern platform that we would have. Uh, and really one that innovates and I spoke about that a little bit earlier, but I want to give a quick example because it really ties to efficiency for us. And so within HCM, we have US payroll, right? And if you think over the last four years, you consider all the changes that have taken place within payroll, federal and state taxes that are a part of payroll, and you look at COVID pushing us to more remote individuals that are working with our environments, it means that we have state taxes that we're paying out that aren't just the state of Texas, right? They're California, they're Colorado, they're across the board. And for us to be able to make that transition successfully, if we weren't on Workday, would have been, we got to figure all of those out. We got to talk to our legal counsel, and then we have to code it, right? But with Workday, we were able to just lean because HCM system is updated with those. So we rely on that from a Workday standpoint. And that in and of itself creates efficiencies for us. It's something we can't-- we don't have to do. It's something we can trust that we know we're gonna get out of the application. The other is Workday helps us make adjustments really quickly. And I'm gonna go back to COVID again. But with COVID, uh, and I'm sure LSU was the same way, we were in a situation where very quickly we had to track vaccinations, right? If you had federal grants, right, all these grants and huge dollars, you're talking billions of dollars coming to play. And this wasn't a, "I'm gonna analyze this for six months, and then I'm gonna configure for six months, and then I'm gonna get something--" It's like, "No, within a couple of weeks, you better have something going," right? So we were able to use Workday Extend and we leveraged, right, a tool that was created by another institution, and we customized it a little bit to get us going. But within a handful of weeks, we had a tool that was out there. We were capturing vaccinations, we were capturing the doc entation for it, and we could report that out to our leaders so they knew what was going on, and we weren't in jeopardy for anything regarding grants.  , the other piece is, and I don't know how much LSU does this, but with flexible work arrangements.

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Blair: Same deal, right? Came up pretty quickly. It took us a couple of years to get a policy in place. [laughter] I will say that.  , but when we did, we had a tool that would provide us a business process to capture that remote work or that alternate work location, whatever the case may be for that. And we could do so easily. And we did it in a tool that our HR team was already using. So it wasn't something new they had to go to. They're already there. They're utilizing it. And the same for the employees. And for that, Workday rolled out a product within core HCM, right, that provided multiple business processes. We just took those, again, made a couple of tweaks to them, but they were available to us. So it put us in a position that we could react quickly, we could make quick decisions, and we could adjust to do what we needed to do. And it's been extremely beneficial.

Ward: That's incredible. So, Allie, LSU is planning to go live on Workday Student this spring.

Prest: [crosstalk]. Yes.

Ward: So exciting. So what's the goal for modernizing the student experience there?

Prest:  Yeah. So I would say, ultimately, our goal is really to power transformative engagement with our students, really, faculty, staff, administration, everybody in a unified system. I keep saying we're already on HCM and Finn. Now we're going to move to Workday Student as well. That means, in theory, most of our people across the board, regardless of what their position is, are going to be touching the same system to accomplish whatever it is they're trying to do that day on campus, right? And so that is-- that in and of itself is something that's never happened at LSU before because we'd had so many different places to do things.  , for me, and it's not something we've really talked a ton about today, but from that student experience standpoint,  , n-none of the students we're working with, my stepdaughter included, are living in the same world that we lived in, right? Like, she's expecting to have very little human interaction to accomplish a task, to pull something up on her phone or tablet, do it quickly, understand it quickly, and move on because she's got 87 other things to do that are more interesting, right?

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Prest: And so for us,  , putting this type of tool, putting Workday Student in their hands, and allowing them to, to manipulate what I feel to be a pretty intuitive product to allow them to accomplish whatever it is they need to do in that moment quickly and then move on to the next task, that's the goal. We don't want students to have to jump through 87 hoops to accomplish something. We want them to understand what they need to do, find it quickly, and just have it be processed. We don't want them to have to walk to three offices on campus to get a form signed.  , and so I think that's one of the things that we're really excited about, trying to find ways to meet them where they are and where-- the students, where they are, and where they're comfortable. And that's what a lot of, uh, that design work that I mentioned earlier was in, was really thinking about we weren't trying to design necessarily to match our current-state process, but rather to say, "How could this be better? How can this be something? Yeah, we might do it that way today, but does that even make sense? Or is that born out of necessity for what we, we had to work with previously?" And so,  , my end goal is that in March, students are registering for the s mer and fall in Workday. They know how to use the system. It's a seamless process because they pulled it up, and, huh, selfishly, my training videos matched exactly [laughter] what it looked like, and they knew exactly what to do.  , but that everybody has a good experience this March. And so for us, as you mentioned, we're going live in the spring. Our goal is that we have students registering in March. So,  , that's a huge, monumental goal.  --

Blair: It is.

Prest: --but, but we're excited about it. And, and we are-- you know, we're in testing phases now, and we're seeing it work. And so we're, we're hoping that we really are able to transform that student experience that then has the trickle-down or triple-- trickle-up effect to our staff, our faculty, our--

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Prest: --admins--

Ward: Mm-hmm.

Prest: --so that everybody is, is enjoying a more modern product than what we certainly are experiencing now.

Ward: Yeah. Well, we are so excited for you guys. We're all rooting for you. I'm sure it's a gonna be a huge success.

Prest: Yes.

Ward: So Allie and Brad, thank you so much for joining us on the Forever Forward bus at our co-- stop at, uh, College Station. We appreciate your time and your insights you've shared today.

Prest: Yeah, thanks. Enjoyed it.

Blair: Thank you for joining us.

Ward: We've been speaking with Allie Prest, Organizational Change Manager and Training Lead at LSU, and Brad Blair, executive Director at Texas A&M University System. I'm your host, Shawna Ward. Remember to follow us on wherever you listen to your favorite podcast, and you can find our entire catalog at workday.com/podcast. Thanks for listening.