Keeping up with Project Helios
Stay up to date with the project team’s activities! We have set up a notification tool that will send an alert to your Inbox when we post news to the Project Helios website. We hope you’ll take advantage of this easy way to keep up to date with the project. You can sign up on the News You Can Use page.
Conversations Need 2 People
We are committed to listen, to be transparent about what the project is doing and to provide opportunities for our institutions and agencies to be heard and involved in the process. If you have questions or comments related to Project Helios, please send us a note at projecthelios@tamus.edu or send your comments through the Contact Us page on the Project Helios website.
Our System Integrator Partner is Deloitte
We are pleased to announce that Deloitte Consulting, LLP, was selected as our system integrator partner. Deloitte has significant experience in Workday implementations, including several in higher education. They have committed experienced leadership, functional and technical leads to partner with the TAMUS team and each resource brings significant experience to Project Helios. We believe it will be a prosperous long-term relationship. The team arrived mid-October and hit the ground running!
Quality Control Partner
There’s one more piece to our partner puzzle – an Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) quality control partner. IV&V is often used on large, complex software implementation projects to help ensure that the delivered system performs to the defined specifications and business requirements established by the team. This is particularly important with a project as comprehensive and complex as our Workday implementation. A RFP for an IV&V consultant is in the works and we look forward to wrapping up this final piece of our Project Helios team.
Project Kickoff Coming Soon
We are operating in high gear to get ready to kickoff Project Helios with member Change Champions and Project Coordinators. We want to get the Change Champions and Project Coordinators ‘in-the-know’ as soon as possible since they are integral to the project’s connection to all institutions and agencies. We know they will be great ambassadors to their institution or agency and help ensure a successful Workday implementation. We launch on November 5 in College Station with a half-day event of tours, team introductions, demonstrations, project expectations and timelines
We are in Stage 1: Vision and Planning
Deloitte is helping us complete an extensive planning stage as one of our first tasks. We know that we don’t want to be an example of “fail to plan, plan to fail” and are spending time planning and evaluating risks, capabilities and gaps, and spending time looking at our inventory of business processes. When we finish Stage 1, we’ll have a clear vision of scope and the timeline we need to implement Workday.
We’re looking in detail at:
- Core HR data
- Absence
- Payroll processing
- Time Tracking
- Compensation
- Recruiting / Applicant Tracking
- Benefits
- Talent Management
The team is also evaluating related System-wide business decisions such as consolidating payroll and tax processing under one FEIN for payroll and payroll tax reporting purposes with the help of the Finance / Payroll Integration Working Group chaired by Gary Barnes, Associate Vice President for Finance & Controller at Texas A&M University.
The outcomes from our Stage 1 activities will be directed towards the Executive Advisory Committee for review and the Executive Sponsors for approval before proceeding into Stage 2: Architect. We’ll focus on design and configuration of business processes, workflows, security and reporting during the Architect stage. At various steps, we’ll reach out to HR and Payroll offices and subject-matter experts as we encounter questions or issues where their insight will be critical.
Following our Guiding Principles
It won’t happen overnight, but we believe a new experience is coming to the A&M System – one that is modern, focused on users and streamlined, with common business processes across the A&M System. The reality of getting to common business processes will take work from all institutions and agencies, listening and providing input and making decisions on what is the right answer for the A&M System.
We’ll use our Guiding Principles to help us make decisions.
- Keep the core mission in view
- We are committed that our use of Workday must serve the students, faculty and staff of The Texas A&M University System by making it easy to get HR and payroll work done to allow them to focus on our core mission of teaching, research and public service.
- Work the same
- We need to simplify and standardize our HR and payroll processes and will adopt common business processes across all members as often as possible.
We will work the same as much as possible and as different as needed.
- We need to simplify and standardize our HR and payroll processes and will adopt common business processes across all members as often as possible.
- Do no harm
- Although our HR and payroll systems are ready to retire, they have met many of our needs and they do some things very well. As we look at what Workday can do for us and how we can use it, we will keep focused on the quality of our business process solutions.
- Keep moving forward
- At some point in time, we really do want to use Workday! We will provide enough time to our business process teams to decide how the A&M System should use Workday, but we need to make decisions and keep moving forward.
- Follow best practices and embrace the Workday community
- We commit to look at best practices and solutions used by other Workday customers and let them guide how we might get work done. We will use what others have learned to help us decide the best processes for the A&M System.
Project Team Staffing Opportunities
We have taken a short pause from adding staff until we know more about the project’s scope. Once we identify project scope and have clearer insight into the tasks that lay ahead, we’ll take a look at our staffing plans to ensure the right mix of skills and resources we need to be successful.
We’ve Moved!
The team officially moved into new office space at the Village Shopping Center, across University Drive from the A&M System Offices in the Moore / Connally Building. We are excited to have collaborative space for both the TAMUS employees and the Deloitte team, with plenty of space for business process workshops. Our new address is 700 University Drive E, Suite 104, Mail Stop 1134. Please stop by when you are in the area!
What’s Next
- November: Project Kickoff with Change Champions and Project Coordinators
- November / December: Project Update with HR / Payroll Departmental Processors
- November through January: Stage I: Vision and Planning
- February: Stage 2 Kickoff