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This is The Possibility Perspective.
The show where we peel back the layers on enhancing enterprise solutions with Workday magic and PeopleSoft innovation. We’ll sit with real-time customers who've participated in our tailored services.
Whether you're eyeing a smooth Workday transition or modernizing your PeopleSoft with the power of Amazon’s public cloud (AWS), we've got you covered. We’ll dive into topics from cloud migrations to fluid user experiences.
Tune in and empower yourself with the knowledge to optimize your enterprise solutions.
[00:00:00] Dave Kieffer: You have a continuous adoption curve, after your initial implementation in which you and your partner can adopt new components of the software, adopt new things as they come out, tweak the things that you didn't like as your business changes, and really become this kind of flat ongoing, set of services around optimization, that allows institutions to continue to optimize their implementation and their business practices for the long haul. So that's kind of the setup for how we think about optimization as a service.
[00:00:31] Hello friends. I'm Jeff Miller from ERPA and you're listening to The Possibility Perspective, the show where we talk to strategic minded Workday customers who partner with ERPA for a better Workday experience.
[00:00:44] Jeff Miller: Institutions. My name is Jeff Miller, and I'm from ERPA, and I'm gonna be your host today.
[00:00:50] Jeff Miller: On the next slide, you're gonna see our table of contents or our agenda slide.
[00:00:55] Jeff Miller: first of all, Tambellini Group is with us in the house. We're really excited to hear about them. They're gonna tell us a little bit about them as well as this thing called optimization as a service. next, ERPA is in the house. We're gonna tell you a little bit about us, as well as this offering or this deployment methodology that was co-created with Workday called Optima by ERPA.
[00:01:13] Jeff Miller: And then a full tech stack landscape review called ERPA Edge. You'll wanna hear about that. Now, the meat of our webinar sandwich, so to speak, is gonna be Dunwoody College of Technology. Let's be honest, that's why you're here. You wanna hear firsthand experience about a Workday implementation, a go-live, and a post go-live experience, and that's what Mark from Dunwoody is here to talk about.
[00:01:36] Jeff Miller: We will have Q&A at the end. But again, uh, we ask that you submit your questions before the Q&A at the end, and then I'm gonna pose your questions to our presenters on your behalf during that time.
[00:01:50] Jeff Miller: Well, first up is the Tambellini Group. So, we're very proud to partner with Tambellini on today's webinar.
[00:01:56] Jeff Miller: Welcome, Dave. Let me invite you to join me on camera and unmute yourself. And Dave, if you wouldn't mind, tell us a little bit about yourself, and then would you be so kind as to introduce us to Tambellini in a bit more detail, as well as this intriguing concept that you refer to as optimization as a service?
[00:02:14] Jeff Miller: Dave?
[00:02:15] Dave Kieffer: Thanks, Jeff. I'm Dave Kieffer. I'm a principal analyst at the Tambellini Group,my journey to Tambellini is a, is a long one, but I've been here for several years. I wanna tell you a little bit about us as an organization.
[00:02:26] Dave Kieffer: We're a higher education research and advisory firm, and our primary research covers dozens of software categories in higher education across the market. Anything from identity management, to student success, to data and AI strategies. and our research, uh, we use our research and our objective analysis to advocate for higher education in the market.
[00:02:45] Dave Kieffer: We provide advisory services to institutions to advance their technology strategy and modernization, and that includes everything from readiness to assessment through negotiation for solutions. So that's enough about us.
[00:02:58] Dave Kieffer: let me tell you about this idea optimization as a service and why we wanna talk about it.
[00:03:04] Dave Kieffer: So what's happening in the market has been, I'll go back in my experience to the historical pattern of implementations, which was a, a multi-million, sometimes tens of millions, sometimes more than that, implementation costs, very large, very labor-intensive, implementations of especially ERP solutions over the years.
[00:03:24] Dave Kieffer: and at the end of those implementations, there was typically a three to six-month window of, uh, hypercare or, or support, and then your implementation partner generally went away. Unless, of course, you had to extend them because you didn't get everything done from a knowledge transfer perspective that you wanted, and then you were kind of left to your own devices to run those platforms.
[00:03:42] Dave Kieffer: what we're seeing, and I, I think about this largely as a shift in the software, what SaaS software has brought us is continuous change. What does that mean? That means, you are continually, uh, uh, getting new software from your partner, um, multiple times a year, sometimes faster. So your software is continuing to change, and it's not waiting three to five years for an implementation project or an upgrade project to your legacy solution.
[00:04:09] Dave Kieffer: It's happening in real time all the time. The second big change in the software is that it is configurable as opposed to requiring development to change. And so institutions, after they go live, are implementing new components of the software, changing how they, how they work. And so we think about this as continuous adoption.
[00:04:29] Dave Kieffer: there's a third leg of this that I think is really important, which is, given all of those dynamics, you can try to get live on less than everything that you want to get completed. You can go live on a smaller footprint to get live and then continue your adoption journey as you go forward, where in the past, what we often saw was, you know, at go live, business users feel like- I got everything I can get and there's not gonna be any more money, so I have to do everything at once.
[00:04:57] Dave Kieffer: And so think about this as really flattening that curve of adoption across, ERP implementations.
[00:05:07] Dave Kieffer: So if we, if we look at the, the next slide, let's talk about what the optimization as a service, really means. There are two pieces to this. One is how do we engage? How do your partners engage? when you have packaged solutions, highly governed, what it means is you can uptake things more quickly.
[00:05:22] Dave Kieffer: there's more standardization, and so it's easier for you to adopt the solutions in the first place. And that second part is that op-operating model. How does the institution run? ERP as a product, not as a project. So think about it from that perspective. This is a long-term engagement, and whether you're alone or with your partner, you're going to be changing and adopting software on a continuous basis from here forward.
[00:05:46] Dave Kieffer: In order to do that, you need clear decision rights. You need roles and ownership. You need a sustainable capacity to run, adopt, do change management work across those platforms. And so if we look at, again, the long view of this, that is Optimization-as-a-Service You're thinking about from the very beginning of your, your implementation of the software into your out years of continuing to change and adopt that software.
[00:06:12] Dave Kieffer: And what we're seeing the partner community start to do, and this is an example you hear about today, is change the way they engage with institutions to be a long-term partner from the outset. To say, "We know you're not gonna get everything at your go-live that you need to get." there's gonna be instead of a phase two or a phase three at the end, you have a continuous adoption curve, after your initial implementation in which you and your partner can adopt new components of the software, adopt new things as they come out, tweak the things that you didn't like as your business changes, and really become this kind of flat ongoing, set of services around optimization, right?
[00:06:50] Dave Kieffer: And that, that allows institutions to continue to optimize their implementation and their business practices for the long haul. So that's kind of the setup for how I th- how we think about optimization as a service. And I think,what you're gonna hear from, ERPA is one of those, offerings that's, that's in this category that we have seen.
[00:07:11] Dave Kieffer: And I think that, yeah, look, looking at what does it solve, um, we've talked a little bit about that, that go live and goodbye, as opposed to, uh, your partner leaving when the implementation is complete, you're left on your own, and then you have another huge change spike three to five years out when you have your next update.
[00:07:30] Dave Kieffer: Instead, you're gonna go live and evolve, and over time, build practices within yourselves and with your partners, to figure out, what do I wanna adopt next? What do I need to change based on external or internal changes that are happening at the institution? And how do I govern that effectively? So looking for partners that can be that wraparound partner to help you with all of those components is really what we're seeing start to evolve in the market.
[00:07:54] Dave Kieffer: and it's been just in the last few years that we've seen this start to happen, and I think it's a, a huge plus for a lot of institutions. T-two things to really consider here. One is, how does this help me implement the software faster and at lower cost initially to avoid that tens of millions of dollars bump be as high as it would be, and use my out years to adopt further, further components, to re- also reduce that change burden at the implementation time.
[00:08:21] Dave Kieffer: So, think about this as flattening the curve. I think that's the best way to visualize what we're talking about here in terms of optimization as a service. and I think what you'll hear from ERPA is, is one version of that that we've seen in the market, and happy to hand it over to the, to the ERPA team to talk about that.
[00:08:36] Jeff Miller: Cool. Dave, thank you.
[00:08:44] Jeff Miller: Uh, let me invite Hooman to join me on camera and unmute yourself. And Dave isn't going away, so very excited to have Dave come back in a few minutes where he's gonna be really drawing out the story from Mark from Dunwoody College of Technology. But before we get to that, what I've called, the meat of the webinar sandwich, first, we're gonna hear a little bit about ERPA, and we're gonna expand our version, I would say, of this optimization as a service that Dave introduced.
[00:09:03] Jeff Miller: So Hooman, tell us a little bit about yourself and about ERPA
[00:09:07] Houman Immen: Thank you, Jeff. So a little bit, about myself. I'm the Chief Revenue Officer at ERPA, been here four years. I've had 16 years of experience in the Workday ecosystem. I started in the early days at Workday in 2010. But then a couple years later, I really enjoyed being on the partner side.
[00:09:23] Houman Immen: So for the past 14 years, I've been on the partner side of the equation, partnering with thousands of organizations and really enjoying watching the growth that Workday's had, but also the challenge that it comes with maximizing the value for customers. So really passionate about that.
[00:09:37] Houman Immen: first, if you ever just call us ERPA, it's ERPA, you've heard it by now.
[00:09:42] Houman Immen: ERPA actually stands for empathy, responsibility, passion, agility. I'll come back to that later. We've been in business 25 years, and we've had 1,100 engagements, uh, with customers across a lot of industries. But, uh, if you think about our, focus areas, 90% of our customers are in public sector. We do have some, some commercial customers, and out of that 90%, 75% have been in higher ed.
[00:10:06] Houman Immen: So we've had a lot of experience in student in- uh, information systems, systems like, Banner, Colleague, PeopleSoft, lots of PeopleSoft experience. And in the Workday world, as we expanded five years ago and became a Workday full services partner, we really specialize in higher ed, and in the AWS world, we also have the certifications and the competencies in education, so we're dedicated around that.
[00:10:30] Houman Immen: In the Workday world, we have a million plus hours collectively as a team spent on, really bringing value to Workday customers. And on the AWS side, we, really are proud of the engagements we get involved with because it's all about the total cost of ownerships that we've been able to introduce to our customers that makes the entire business case very comprehensive when you move to Workday.
[00:10:51] Houman Immen: A little bit more to, share with you around our Workday practice. we are A full-fledged partner, which means we do deployment, managed services, which we call AMS, application managed services, strategic consulting. we do provide staffing, so if you have a need to have client-side support, we've been really good at partnering and identifying those gaps and be able to, fill the right resources at the right time.
[00:11:15] Houman Immen: We do a lot of optimization. Uh, the word optimization as a service is near and dear to our heart that Dave brought up, and that was a great intro for what the market is experiencing today. So that's a focus area for us as well. And we're also a Workday Extend built on Workday, which means we allow,opportunities to really listen to your unique needs and have customizations that I know exist in each of you and be able to, create an application for it.
[00:11:38] Houman Immen: That's what Workday Extend is for. Our Workday team is 120-plus certified resources, and an average, we have five certifications. Why does that mean to you? What that means is, uh, we know the end-to-end, uh, decision-making that goes around when we recommend a solution to you. So if it's a payroll, our payroll resource, for example, has also absence time tracking and understands the full gamut of that recommendation.
[00:12:02] Houman Immen: And when it comes to financial aid, could be financial aid, student financials, record advising, even though they have a focus area, so they know the whole spectrum of how we can service a customer. so collectively, we put an amazing team. our higher ed team has 16 years of experience in higher ed, and they're Workday experts along with higher ed experts.
[00:12:21] Houman Immen: Many of them were in, roles like you and have had years of experience before they transitioned to a world of consulting and then Workday. so to 200 customers we served, a lot of them are in higher ed, but also broader. But we are really passionate about customer satisfaction. So we're really also proud of NPS, and our NPS score is 65.
[00:12:41] Houman Immen: If you know NPS, that's a very high number. Uh, next I'm gonna go ahead and talk a little bit more about what we believe is a gap in the marketplace today. Uh, we think, we're very empathetic as it goes to our values around what the gap is. I think a lot of Workday, investments, unfortunately, if it's not looked at it the right way, it's all about the fragmented ownership and the post go-live drop-off that happens.
[00:13:04] Houman Immen: So then ultimately that becomes an underutilized investment. It's an expensive pro- uh, implementation, but then you don't get the value sometimes if you don't think about it around the life cycle and the whole process. So for us, that's a gap in the marketplace, and ultimately people are forced between the trade-offs that are really tied to speed, cost, risk, and they're not looking at it as a whole, which is what they've actually brought up as an optimization as a service.
[00:13:27] Houman Immen: It's not a project. So that's a challenge we believe exists, and we're here and very passionate ab- about solving that challenge. As a matter of fact, we feel very responsible as one of our core values to go ahead and, present to you today. What we're presenting is because we feel responsible to solve this challenge.
[00:13:43] Houman Immen: Next, a little bit more about what you've heard, what is Optima. So Optima is not a project. It's an operating model, as I mentioned, with a life cycle value in mind. So it starts with deployment, moves towards stabilization, and it's always, always about adoption to make you successful, regardless of whether you're an administrator, whether you're a provost, whether you have faculty responsibilities, or actually a student with the most important element in this equation to adoption is if we don't get adoption, then we're not allowing you to be successful.
[00:14:15] Houman Immen: And then last but not least, the optimization, the ongoing continuous improvement and value realization. So then you ultimately get one partner in ERPA that's able to go ahead and service you not just as a project, but stay with you for the life and have no drop-off in the value you need post go-live.
[00:14:32] Houman Immen: And by the way, I've got to this point of the presentation, I have not mentioned the word AI, but I will say AI is just an afterthought. Workday includes AI, it's embedded. But if we are able to partner with you and optimize and help you value, help you realize the value, then the AI is embedded and it's gonna come to life to solve that unique use case.
[00:14:49] Houman Immen: So it's embedded in the offerings that Workday really creates. That's why we're not mentioning it here as a slide by itself. But we have some comments around AI, and we'll go ahead next and talk a little bit about Optima and the packages that we've created. So really in summary, what Optima is gonna do is eliminate that life cycle fragmentation, give you the, uh, continuous value, and last but not least, align with your maturity and your appetite for where you are going, what you want out of that.
[00:15:19] Houman Immen: And we get into more detail what we me- what we mean by your appetite. So when we look at Optima- It's a deployment as a service. By the way, when we first met Dave and Tambellini and we heard about optimization as a service, we didn't really align. This just happened to be a term we had coined deployment as a service for our offering that we're passionate about, and it just so happens that he was talking about the market and what they see it and we really value that.
[00:15:42] Houman Immen: That's why we actually see it as a life cycle, uh, investment. When you choose Workday, you need one partner, one motion. You don't need to have a drop-off post go live. You need us to stay with you and help you, uh, partner with you and help you maximize that value. And that reduces the delivery, reduces the project from going long.
[00:16:01] Houman Immen: We want it to be on time, on budget at a fixed cost, and it gives you the confidence to be able to know that it was successful and you got the final student outcome you wanted to make sure that it was a very successful project for anybody that touches system, regardless of faculty, student or administrator.
[00:16:17] Houman Immen: How do we do that? We are using AI delivery accelerators. because of our AWS relationship, we know the areas that are really bad in terms of a project when it goes south, or data conversion, taking data out of systems, testing. If those two things don't happen well, then projects go south. So we have focused on bringing the best tool set around data acceleration and integrations as well as testing to make sure that we are using technologies.
[00:16:42] Houman Immen: And an example is in student data. We're using modern AI capabilities to map data from your program records and be able to, get the work that you would have had to manually do done, and it's automated using our technology. It's really neat when we get these use cases shared with you, and you'll be able to see how much hours are reduced, and then it gives more time back to focus on the actual tasks that are important.
[00:17:04] Houman Immen: And ultimately, when you're live, the data bridge is all about how do you get that data to work for you well. And Shawn is gonna spend, a good amount of time talking about the cloud foundation report, but think of it as our no charge offering to every institution that looks at your entire technology stack and looks at opportunities for modernization, which ultimately reduces the cost and hopefully eliminates the need for a business case.
[00:17:27] Houman Immen: Now, Optima alone has got three packages. On the-- From the left to right, it's all about speed and cost, your growth and adoption, and then ultimately some institutions that have complexities and risk tolerance is not there such as requirements for state reporting unions and so forth. So if its cost and speed is Optima Core, we've designed a package for the Optima Plus, which is really the growth and adoption, and you still have SKUs that you wanna go live with afterwards.
[00:17:52] Houman Immen: It's not just a joint, uh, a discrete deployment. You have bought products, and you need to go live afterwards with it. And then Optima Advantage is ultimately more comprehensive, and you have to mitigate risk knowing that you have state reporting requirements as an example. So Optima is not a traditional AMS model, it's designed to fit your needs.
[00:18:10] Houman Immen: I'm not gonna read every bullet here, but Optima Core, again, it's really focused around you're establishing baseline for Workday competency and usability. So really it gives you the value with a stable operating foundation to get you go live and then stay with you for stabilization. Optima Plus is focusing on that continuous improvement in strategic business alignment after go-live to adopt a new functionality that you needed, but after the initial functionality is up and running.
[00:18:37] Houman Immen: And Optima Advantage is not to just get the core system up and running, but also optimize the system after go live, but enhance some of the unique requirements you have, such as state reporting requirements or attendance tracking unique, uh, requirements, and be able to know that you need those things, and we have to prioritize that with a life cycle in mind.
[00:18:56] Houman Immen: So we've designed these packages. Now, can we mix and match if somebody needs, for example, formalized governance, decision rights, and escalation framework in Optima Core? Absolutely. We just have, uh, really studied the market and really focused on stability, adoption optimization, and risk and governance to put the right package.
[00:19:13] Houman Immen: And all of them are designed with cost-effectiveness in mind. We are very empathetic around the model that re- needs to be in place to be able to allow you to afford implementing Workday, and that's why we're really passionate about these offerings, to make sure we can make more Workday more affordable and cost-effective for you regardless of which package you choose.
[00:19:31] Houman Immen: Shawn is gonna next talk a little bit about our AWS and that cloud foundation assessment that I s- uh, mentioned earlier.
[00:19:39] Shawn Fournier: Perfect. Thank you, Hooman.
[00:19:40] Shawn Fournier: by means of introduction, my name is Shawn Fournier. I'm the Vice President of Alliances here at ERPA, and my responsibility really is about bringing the best of our partner ecosystem forward. So whether that's Workday, whether that's AWS, whether that's Anthropic, all of those things that we want to vet and bring forward, uh, to drive business outcomes for you, uh, our partners and clients.
[00:20:00] Shawn Fournier: It- it's unreasonable to expect you to keep up, right? AWS alone had five hundred product and, version releases last year, so we'll stay on top of that for you. first I want to speak to very quickly, um, our qualifications and, and bear with me. Recognizing that you'll have the recording and recognizing that the deck will be available, I'm gonna touch the top of the waves and get us to the real world example, with Dunwoody
[00:20:22] Shawn Fournier: But first of all, it's important to recognize that a- as Hooman said, we, we are a Workday partner, right? our DNA is in ERP SaaS, specifically Workday, but it's important to note that we also have a very strong DNA within, modernizing legacy ERPs like PeopleSoft on AWS and then delivering them back SaaS-like.
[00:20:43] Shawn Fournier: So the reality is these two worlds have converged today, right? ERP, ERP SaaS, um, legacy ERP modernization in the cloud. And so it's important to recognize that, As a partner, ERP is uniquely qualified, right? As, as a Workday partner, I'm not gonna line out our credentials there, but also as an AWS partner.
[00:21:02] Shawn Fournier: AWS has a unique system to qualify partners, right? With an ecosystem of 130,000 partners, it can be difficult sometimes for, potential clients to vet through who can help me solve this business problem. AWS organizes competencies, which are third-party cert-- rigorous third-party certifications in, within the partner ecosystem.
[00:21:21] Shawn Fournier: So for example, if you're looking for someone to mi- help migrate and modernize a legacy application or legacy ERP like PeopleSoft AWS, there are 589 partners within the AWS ecosystem that are vetted and qualified to help you do that efficiently. There are, uh, less than 100 partners that are EDU, subject matter experts, and there are less than 30 partners that are Oracle, example, PeopleSoft subject matter experts.
[00:21:47] Shawn Fournier: If you Venn diagram those, three competencies, wi- within the, entire AWS ecosystem of 130,000 partners, there are only three, and ERP is one of those. So it's important to know, that we have these qualifications with Workday, and additionally, we have these qualifications in AWS. That's all great for us.
[00:22:06] Shawn Fournier: But let's talk about w- what does that mean for you, right? And the net reality of what that means for you is it enables a broader discussion, right? So it allows us to, to not project focus exclusively on Workday, which we're happy to do, but it enables a broader discussion to understand how your Workday adoption and continuous rolling improvement of Workday, what are the implications across the rest of the enterprise, and how can we impact that?
[00:22:33] Shawn Fournier: So the net is that our unique perspective, it enables a broader discussion. And on the next slide, I'm gonna share with you why is that even important? Who cares? I recognize that oftentimes we get so hyper-focused on just our ERP that the rest of it becomes noise. And Jeff, if you'll build this slide out, I'll go ahead and hammer through it.
[00:22:53] Shawn Fournier: I wanna give you just one example, and the example here, the reality here is that most ERP business cases ignore 80% of IT spending. All right? This is an example that was produced by Educause in 2024 in their interactive almanac. they had a number of, statistical points around IT spending and staffing.
[00:23:13] Shawn Fournier: In this example, they pointed out that a typical IT spend for a 10,000-student university looks like this So the reality is while we're focusing on ERP modernization and we're trying to build a business case for Workday SaaS adoptions, a lot of times we're ignoring eighty percent of the potential IT spend that could contribute to a stronger business case.
[00:23:35] Shawn Fournier: So by expanding the scope, we can build a stronger data-driven business case for Workday adoption and institution-wide modernization, right? So the reality is, based on another Forrester study, that if we look beyond ERPA into the remainder of those other segments, the average, efficiency gained, the average TCO improvement by modernizing legacy infrastructure, legacy applications, and other being network security, etc.,
[00:24:03] Shawn Fournier: is a thirty percent improvement. So in this example, with a thirteen million dollar budget, if we're able to modernize or see a TCO improvement of thirty percent, that's almost four million dollars a year of incremental budget that we have now created to potentially offset our Workday adoption. And over five years, over nineteen million dollars.
[00:24:24] Shawn Fournier: So the reality is we can, we can't afford not to take a broader view of what we're doing beyond ERP.
[00:24:32] Shawn Fournier: So, with that in mind, I want to tell you, how do we do that? And Hooman mentioned the cloud foundation assessment. This is an assessment where ERP essentially says, "Yes, Workday SaaS will help you.
[00:24:43] Shawn Fournier: we're a Workday customer, Workday client, Workday partner." But, let's understand what it looks like institution-wide. Modernization might look like institution-wide. So it's a three-step process. We'll assess the opportunity, a very quick lightweight discovery on our part. We'll connect all the data, step two.
[00:24:58] Shawn Fournier: And then number three, we'll provide you-- it's literally a sixty-page executive summary with a five-year modernization strategy complete with TCO ROI. That business intelligence is given to you cost-free, and you can do what you want with it. You can throw it away. You could execute against that internally.
[00:25:15] Shawn Fournier: You could execute against that with a partner. You could obviously execute against that with us, which we would love. But the reality is you now have the business intelligence to offer a three to five-year strategy, holistic strategy that incorporates your Workday modernization effort and ideally builds a much stronger business case across the board for the ERP project.
[00:25:36] Shawn Fournier: So last, let me just say this. All that we're talking about here is we're extending value, beyond the core platform, right? So Optima optimizes your Workday journey. Think of ERPA Edge looking at everything that's around the edge of Workday. What else, can we potentially modernize in a way that optimizes your ROI, building a stronger business case, and in some cases, making this a $0 effort for Workday adoption, implementation, and continuous improvement?
[00:26:08] Shawn Fournier: So, I know that was quick. You'll have contact details, the deck, and be able to reach out to us directly. But really what I want to get to is what does this look like in real life? And for that, I'm gonna turn it back to Jeff.
[00:26:20] Jeff Miller: Awesome. Thank you, Houman, and thank you, Shawn.
[00:26:24] Jeff Miller: mentioned the meat of the webinar sandwich, and that is Mark Anderson from Dunwoody College of Technology. Thanks for being with us, Mark.
[00:26:29] Jeff Miller: And Mark, I would love for you to tell us a little bit about yourself, a little bit about Dunwoody College of Technology, and then, Dave, if you wanna go ahead and join us on camera and unmute yourself. Dave is going to draw out from Mark the Dunwoody Workday journey. So Mark, tell us about yourself and Dunwoody.
[00:26:45] Mark Anderson: thank you. He- hello, everybody. Mark Anderson. Happy to be here. Um, I'm the chief technology officer at Dunwoody. I've been at Dunwoody for, uh, 26 years. A little over 26 years. I actually looked it up on, uh, Workday personal information tab before I jumped on the webinar. and I've been here 26 years, three months, and 25 days.
[00:27:05] Mark Anderson: So how about that? I've held a lot of different titles here at Dunwoody. I've been a student employee, so that's kind of where I started. My roots was I went to college here at Dunwoody for, uh, IT, and then, uh, became a student worker, student employee, and then, uh, various titles throughout the, the years in operations and infrastructure side of IT.
[00:27:26] Mark Anderson: Um, I've learned about the college in a lot of different, from a lot of different angles, student, faculty, staff, alumni. so that's been, uh, a blessing, uh, as we went into a ma- massively transformative project like, like Workday and ERP. but Dunwoody is a, a, a private, uh, nonprofit technical college.
[00:27:47] Mark Anderson: we're in Minneapolis. We're on the west side of Minneapolis. We have about, uh, uh, 1,600 enrollment, uh, around 350 to 400 employees, give or take, depending on if you're counting adjuncts and really we've, uh, been around for over 100 years. Um, we're well established and one of the pioneers of, of technical education in, in the country.
[00:28:11] Mark Anderson: And, uh, yeah, I'm just happy to be here and, uh, we've got a great story to tell, I think, in how things have been going with, with our Workday project and through our partnership with ERPA.
[00:28:20] Dave Kieffer: Great. Thanks for the introduction, Mark. Welcome. And now everybody can settle in for our fireside chat without the fire.
[00:28:27] Dave Kieffer: It's really interesting you mentioned the student employee thing. In our previous conversation, we noted that we both started our careers as student employees, in IT careers and in IT, um, studies,and spent many, many years at our institutions. I think that's a, it's becoming a more unique position, right, as folks transition careers, more often than they did in years past, in decades past.
[00:28:50] Dave Kieffer: how do you think your longevity and your, your understanding of Dunwoody have helped shape the way that you led this journey, your modernization journey?
[00:29:00] Mark Anderson: Well, I think it's just a real intimate knowledge that I have around our, what our technical infrastructure looks like at the college, and the human element, too.
[00:29:08] Mark Anderson: Uh, built up a lot of relationship at the, at the college over the years. I've held a lot of different constituencies with, being a student here at the college, uh, working on the staff side, being an alumni. So I think that positioned me well to lead the Workday project, especially given that at the heart of this, not only is a people, uh, issue around change management and systems, but also just a, a massive, technology implementation.
[00:29:38] Mark Anderson: So understanding where the technology debt is and what that looks like at colleges is extremely helpful when you get into a, a project of this size.
[00:29:48] Dave Kieffer: I totally agree with that. That makes a ton of sense.
[00:29:54] Dave Kieffer: So as you started to consider this, this modernization process, what was really the driver? What problem were you trying to solve when you started down this pathway?
[00:30:02] Mark Anderson: Really, it's getting us out of technology debt. I... There's a couple different things I like to talk about with my team at Dunwoody. One is the tech- technology debt and how massive that is and, and just how much time that consumes from my team,and how that turns into what I, I also like to call, technology blame, which is when things aren't going right and there are technologies at the core, they tend to come at the IT department, in lots of different ways.
[00:30:29] Mark Anderson: And so it's, it's on us to, think strategically, understand what the challenges are at the college, and really, work our way out of that in a lot of different creative ways. And having all the systems that we had, you know, because it starts in the beginning where you have, like, a student information system and And you'll have a financial system, a general ledger system, and, uh, HR system.
[00:30:52] Mark Anderson: Then all of a sudden you start spawning a learning management system, and, uh, and financial aid and various different systems come to play. and all of a sudden it, it becomes something that is, uh, unsustainable to support for a small team. Especially when you got,uh, at Dunwoody, we have 1,500, 1,600 students, 300, 400 employees.
[00:31:13] Mark Anderson: We have about 11 people on our IT staff. So, it really is a tremendous amount of work trying to support the integrations. And what ends up happening is when you have this massive technology debt and things, uh, aren't reporting correctly, your data's not reporting accurately, they oftentimes will come at IT a- and, uh, and look to us to solve that problem, which, uh, when you're working with modern systems, with API and support-based contracts, can, you, you know, you have additional options.
[00:31:45] Mark Anderson: When you're working with custom-developed systems, and mixture of cloud a- and on-prem, it just presents a lot of unique challenges that, that we needed to solve- Mm-hmm ... for the institution. But I think mainly- I- ... at the heart of this is the student experience, right? as a student myself, going through Dunwoody on multiple different occasions as a student, you want that experience to be something that is, meets them where they're at, allows them to leverage modern technology, mobile technology to be able to do what they need to do and process to get where they need to, throughout their education.
[00:32:22] Dave Kieffer: Great.
[00:32:23] Dave Kieffer: So as you look through that lens of technology modernization and, and student experience, tell us a little bit about the selection process. How did you end up at Workday and ERPA as your partners?
[00:32:35] Mark Anderson: Yeah. Um, so it was about a 12-month process where we, were looking at our systems.
[00:32:41] Mark Anderson: we were working with a third-party company to help us do a system selection and the RFP process. 'Cause this isn't something we do on a regular basis, right? Going through the, the RFP process and selecting a, a new ERP. So we wanted to really do that in a way that, instilled trust in the organization, and really went through this in a strategic way, in alignment with our strategic plan and all the other priorities for the college.
[00:33:05] Mark Anderson: So w- what we ended up doing was, uh, bringing a third party in. we did focus group meetings. Uh, we defined what our functional requirements were. Uh, we did demonstrations. our third party helped us score everything, go through a sort of a ranked-choice voting. Um, we looked at, best-of-breed and ERP, interesting enough.
[00:33:27] Mark Anderson: So rather than- Mm-hmm ... just bringing in a single ERP We also wanted to, look at what it would look like just replacing our systems one for one with sort of best of breed. and going into it, we actually thought that that would be, uh, financially advantageous to us to go that route. So it, it was very interesting to get, to look at all this holistically with all the scoring and functional requirements defined and the costing exercise, and actually see that, uh, from an operational standpoint, it was actually cheaper to go with a full-fledged ERP, which, solves a lot of challenges for us as well around data silos and, and just the human element- Mm-hmm
[00:34:06] Mark Anderson: of people feeling like they're, responsible for their own system. And it's not a, a college-wide holistic approach to data and to systems.
[00:34:16] Dave Kieffer: Yeah, that makes sense.
[00:34:18] Dave Kieffer: And how did you end up selecting your partner with ERPA?
[00:34:22] Mark Anderson: Yeah. So, we looked at a number of different partners and, there was, um, just a strong partnership that I could feel right off the, right off the jump from my meetings with ERPA and their ability to come, come on site and really talk to us about our unique challenges that we were faced with.
[00:34:41] Mark Anderson: Their, people that, that came on site to, to help us solve for this are really, people that have spent all their time and career in, working in higher education. So that made it really, um, easier to build relationships and build trust, right? When you have your director of financial aid or your director of admissions talking to somebody at ERPA who was themselves, working in that, in those areas, it was, uh...
[00:35:08] Mark Anderson: And it allowed us to build up trust very quickly with them. they also came highly recommended. and we did some reference calls with multiple colleges to learn about strengths,and opportunities and where, um, we needed to really be focused with a project like this to make sure that it was done correctly.
[00:35:27] Mark Anderson: And a lo- a lot of those colleges were out in front of us, you know, six months, maybe a year, maybe two years on their particular ERP implementation. and so we got to learn from them what, what they would do if they got to do it all over, right? If they were to go back and sort of redraw this up, what are some of the things they might do differently?
[00:35:48] Mark Anderson: So, so that was, a combination of all those things kind of led us to ERPA, and then led us to select them as our, as our partner in this venture. Okay
[00:35:58] Dave Kieffer: That's great. All, all best practice items to check off the list to make sure you're looking in every direction to make sure you get the right partner.
[00:36:05] Dave Kieffer: Yeah.
[00:36:16] Dave Kieffer: Houman and Sean both mentioned in their, in their discussion about their view of analyzing the entire technology ecosystem as part of a modernization, not just to pick off the ERP and do it alone. and given the reasons that you entered into this, that makes perfect sense that your scope was not just finance HCM and student year scope was looking at your ecosystem.
[00:36:26] Dave Kieffer: Can you talk a little bit about that broader scope, what you tried to tackle as p- as part of this modernization effort, and why you think it was the right time to, to do the broader look and not just ERP?
[00:36:37] Mark Anderson: Yeah. I mean, I think we had a lot of, uh, preparation coming into this, right? Like meeting with other colleges and learning their experiences.
[00:36:46] Mark Anderson: we developed a, uh, power team at the college too that really allowed us to understand what the unique challenges were in each of the areas, which really teed up an implementation like this well because,it started to do a lot of trust-building between IT and departments around the college. We did a lot of work with our board and with our leadership team as well.
[00:37:07] Mark Anderson: so those are a lot of things that, that kind of helped us, you know, gear up for a change like this. And, uh, to Sean's point earlier, some of his slides and what he was covering, it was I think the right time for us too to look at other things and, and not just, uh, Workday and ERP. I mean, I say just Workday and ERP.
[00:37:27] Mark Anderson: That, that's a massive change in of itself. But, um, we had some other unique challenges that could be solved with, the ERPA team around AWS and some infrastructure challenges we, we have. Particularly at the college, we're a, a one-for-one, uh, laptop program. So anybody that comes to Dunwoody gets a laptop as part of their education here, which has been great and it's worked out great for us for many years.
[00:37:55] Mark Anderson: And I think we're getting to the point now where that solution is a very sort of, uh, legacy on-prem style solution, right? Every student gets a laptop. It has a certain amount of compute. It hits a wall, uh, eventually, especially when we're doing, you know, 3D CAD/CAM design type work. And, one of the potential solutions we're looking at is an AWS-hosted environment where we can do virtual applications.
[00:38:21] Mark Anderson: So, more of a metered pay-as-you-use service as opposed to what we're doing today. very expensive laptop program. And I have to imagine, you know, 80, 70, 80% of the time those laptops are just sitting unused. So pooling all those resources in a cloud-based environment, allowing it to be more, uh, dynamic and scale as we scale Um, is a huge, factor that, that we're looking at here as part of the, um, modernization of our laptop program.
[00:38:53] Mark Anderson: And then another area is around AWS and hosting our, uh, immersive, Dunwoody Immersive Technology, which is aimed at dual credit, uh, in high school. So it's a virtual reality, augmented reality solution where, in high schools, uh, people can take advantage of introductory to tech courses through, VR and augmented reality through an AWS-hosted solution, and really start to solve potentially some of that skills gap in the country we have, where students, you know, have removed their shop program, or high schools have removed their shop programs because of the cost of all that, the expertise to run it, the insurance.
[00:39:34] Mark Anderson: And really having a gateway to go from, uh, high school into the tech careers, I think is, is gonna be a potential area where, where we can, um, make a big, uh, imprint on, on the country around the skills gap.
[00:39:50] Dave Kieffer: That's great. That's great that this program, this overall program that you've launched is addressing that direct student support.
[00:39:57] Dave Kieffer: Love to hear it.
[00:39:59] Dave Kieffer: in the time we have remaining, I want to hone in on a couple of specific topics that I think are relevant to our discussion today. One is that in, in programs like Optima, previously, you started out when it was called Launch, there is this tension between prescriptive implementations and full consensus on every decision.
[00:40:19] Dave Kieffer: How did you lead Dunwoody through this, thread the needle between these two, potential extremes, both of which have difficult outcomes, one on the cost and time side, and the other on the satisfaction side? how did you lead Dunwoody through being prescriptive enough to keep moving, but gaining enough consensus to make sure that the fit was right for Dunwoody?
[00:40:40] Mark Anderson: Yeah. I think it, it happened in a lot of ways, right? Just that year of prep, assembling that power team. It r- really at the core of this is building trust with people and the human element where you're taking care of people and making sure that they feel well taken care of. And a big part of that is change management.
[00:40:57] Mark Anderson: that was probably one of the single biggest points of feedback we got from other colleges, was they would, we would get on with them, and they would say things like, "Yeah, we decided to take on project management on our own," or, "We decided to take on change management or both on our own." And had I g- been able to go back and do it all over again, I would have been a little more intentional around bringing in somebody that can do that work, uh- Mm-hmm
[00:41:23] Mark Anderson: in a descriptive way. So that was one of the things that we did upfront. We were upfront with our board, we were upfront with our leadership team. And from a cost perspective That we really needed to bring in some expertise, somebody that had been through a Workday and higher education implementation, both on the change management side and on the project management side, to help us navigate this.
[00:41:47] Mark Anderson: And I think that's been tremendously successful. that in addition to the other points I made earlier about just, uh, navigating this from a human perspective and assembling that power team where we're- Mm-hmm ... we're meeting with these individuals, we're, we're, we're creating and building trust, uh, with those individuals.
[00:42:06] Mark Anderson: Um, so yeah, I think that's, those are probably some of the biggest points I would make- Great ... on that front.
[00:42:11] Dave Kieffer: and I wanna put a pin in those recommendations for folks who are, are watching today in terms of a change management and project management, bringing in experienced help for that for every institution.
[00:42:20] Dave Kieffer: It's at ta- at top of our recommendation list every time, and I think, the rest of, of that commentary reinforces these are people projects. Yeah. You know, they look like technology projects, but they're all about the people on the campus making the change happen- Yeah ... and bringing in the right partners to make that happen.
[00:42:37] Mark Anderson: It's cultural and human, is really what it is. And there's a ton of stress- The technical side
[00:42:41] Dave Kieffer: is not
[00:42:42] Mark Anderson: easy. Yeah. There's a ton of stress and angst about systems like this and projects like this, and it's not surprising. And unlike finance and HR, there's really no best practices when it comes to student services.
[00:42:56] Mark Anderson: So- the, uh, HR and finance side of this, the platform side of this project, you're working with vastly different processes and people than the student side. so that, that's a major learning curve to, to navigate as well for, for, uh, institutions.
[00:43:12] Dave Kieffer: there's another people aspect of this I'd like to drill into.
[00:43:15] Dave Kieffer: We get asked about this a lot. the relationship between IT and the functional areas. You, you touched on it a little bit. You've, you've emphasized trust and the building of that trust before your project, along with during the project. So on the part of this, the platform side of this where you've gone live, what does that shift look like?
[00:43:31] Dave Kieffer: What does it, what does the relationship look like today between your team and the teams you support compared to what it looked like before you started this process?
[00:43:40] Mark Anderson: Well, I mean, we just have such a tremendous relationship built with them now, and it's through trust, and it's happened by way of this launch methodology and the way that we've implemented so carefully and strategically the Workday project with people, and the work they do.
[00:43:57] Mark Anderson: 'Cause really, I mean, what we're doing at, at the end of the day here is we're asking people to change the way they've done their jobs, and that's not a technical challenge or it's not just a technical challenge. It's, cultural and human. And I think the combination of the power team, the combination of the way that ERPA's expertise and experience has helped us as a college navigate the launch methodology- has really gone a long way to build that trust and partnership.
[00:44:24] Mark Anderson: and ev- and not just during implementation, but post-implementation too. Now that we've gone live on the platform side, w- uh, we all don't just walk away, right? We have- Yeah ... my IT members are deeply embedded with these departments in helping them with security, business process, cross-functional work.
[00:44:43] Mark Anderson: and ERPA is there every step of the way. We have a active support contract with them so we can open up cases, with them as needed. And it's not strangers that come onto these, into these relationships to help us, it's people that we've been working with for the past year, on this project. They, they know Dunwoody, they know our business processes.
[00:45:03] Mark Anderson: They can step right in and contribute and help out. and then on the flip side of that, the IT team,I built up, uh, intentionally our IT staff befo- prior to our implementation into Workday because staff augmentation and staffing challenge is a whole nother topic we could talk about for hours here.
[00:45:22] Mark Anderson: Yep. Um, it's very prescriptive in each area. But in the IT area, um, I intentionally built that up in some ways. So going into this project, um, it's just been a tremendous help for departments to see that IT is... You know, you're not out on an island by yourself. You've got ERPA, you've got IT there, and all these folks are on these calls with you.
[00:45:44] Mark Anderson: We're, we're shedding tears, we're bleeding together, we're going through everything together. And I, I have comments from people on my team and they just-- Not only do they love the new norm about the work that they do, but they're also like, I never thought I would learn so much about financial aid and know so much about financial aid as I do now through this project."
[00:46:09] Mark Anderson: we go out happy hours together. I mean, we, we know each other really well now, and it's just been this cultural change and shift at the college from a sort of siloed, everybody's worried about their own system, their own business processes, to a holistic approach where we're all together, working together in unison.
[00:46:28] Mark Anderson: And whatever changes you're-- configuration you're making in the system, how's that gonna impact upstream and downstream? And those people just getting on calls together and working through the challenges, making decisions at the work stream level instead of everything always having to filter up to a leadership level type decision.
[00:46:47] Mark Anderson: and I, I attest that to, you know, all that pre-work that we did and the partnership with ERPA.
[00:46:54] Dave Kieffer: that's great, Mark. one of the things I wanna draw out from what you just said is that I think it's underappreciated that the transformation-- When we talk about these as transformation projects, the level of transformation in the IT world is ostensively larger than in any of the functional units.
[00:47:10] Dave Kieffer: The job that you do is now different than the job that you did before. you don't just do it differently. You're doing different work, and I think that's underappreciated both by the technology organizations and the business side of these transformations. So it's great to hear how well that's gone for you as you've made that transition, and you were able to get ready by, by building trust and building the team.
[00:47:29] Dave Kieffer: All right, we're about the end of our time. I'm gonna give you one shot to, to talk about anything else you'd, you'd give to folks, uh, who are watching today. what's the one thing you'd tell them to make sure they get right? And what's one thing you'd tell them to stop worrying about?
[00:47:46] Mark Anderson: Great questions.
[00:47:48] Mark Anderson: I would say really focus on that trust-building and partnership within your organization. don't underestimate that. Spend a ton of time doing that socialization, the pre-work that builds that trust and relationship across the institution with your board, with your leadership team, with all the functional areas.
[00:48:08] Mark Anderson: change management, I think being super intentional about change management 'cause you're changing the way people do their jobs, you're changing the way students do their work, and that really requires a lot of time and attention from the organization. So what we did was we did a separate contract for change management, uh, with ERPA to solve for that.
[00:48:30] Mark Anderson: And they brought to the table, their, uh, template for how to, how to implement change within higher education with the Workday implementation, and connecting that with our marketing area and just being super intentional with all the work stream areas around change management, I think, has been a huge aspect of this.
[00:48:48] Mark Anderson: And it's, and it's all along the way, right? You don't just do change management, and then you shift from change management to testing, and then you shift from test... They're all connected and embedded with each other. So as you're going through testing, you're thinking about what change impacts are gonna happen from that.
[00:49:03] Mark Anderson: You're documenting change impacts, and then our change impact team is looking at that and figuring out the best way to, to do that work. So I would say, the pre-work around relationship-building, change management, project management, that's another area that a lot of colleges called out. Don't, don't underestimate the amount of and scale of project management that's involved.
[00:49:26] Mark Anderson: and the thing that I would tell you to not worry about so much, and this is gonna seem, maybe, like, not the greatest idea because you do worry about this a lot, but I would just say the cost of the project. Because the cost is gonna be what it's gonna be, and from an operational standpoint, if you know it's the right move for the institution and it's gonna save you or be cost neutral or a slight, you know, increase on moving from legacy systems to modern, you've got to expect a little bit of, of cost change.
[00:49:52] Mark Anderson: you know, that, that's a big component for me because- we went through a pretty extensive cost analysis of what this was gonna look like, and through our Workday for small institution and through our HESS consortium and ERPA, we were, we were able to build in a pricing model that I think really, really worked for a lot of-- for all, for all of us.
[00:50:13] Mark Anderson: And I've taken on some of the training budget and things like that. So it's just a constant thing that comes up at the college, you know, people worried about what this or that is gonna cost. And, and I'm happy to say most times that we've already built this into the budget with contingency. Mm-hmm. So stop worrying about cost, focus on the change and the configuration- Right
[00:50:31] Mark Anderson: and how this impact you and other departments.
[00:50:35] Dave Kieffer: Right. Let you and the CFO worry about it. Everybody else doesn't need- Right ... to worry
[00:50:38] Mark Anderson: about
[00:50:38] Dave Kieffer: it, right? Great. Thank you so much for the conversation, Mark.
[00:50:43] Dave Kieffer: I wanna bring Jeff back in and see we have any questions.
[00:50:45] Jeff Miller: Yeah, we do. Uh, a few have come in. Let me invite Hooman and Shawn to also join us on camera and unmute themselves.
[00:50:51] Jeff Miller: So let me,dealing with a few different screens. Let me pitch this one first, Dave, to you and then Hooman, if you wanna pile on. First question: Why should an institution want to move to SaaS? Dave first and
[00:51:04] Dave Kieffer: then Hooman. So there's two ways to answer this question. One is bluntly, you probably don't have a lot of choice over the next five years or 10 years.
[00:51:15] Dave Kieffer: Whatever solution you're using that's not SaaS is likely to not be supported at some point in the next decade, uh, if it's not sooner than that. So one is institutions should be thinking about and preparing for this eventuality because that is where software is being written. Um, there really isn't any on-prem software that I know of being written at any scale.
[00:51:33] Dave Kieffer: So that's one piece. But the second piece is there's true advantages here. We talked about it early on. the agility of the software companies in this space bringing new functionality on a regular basis, able to pivot into AI like most of them are doing relatively quickly, able to bring new technology without you having to switch vendors or re-implement your solutions, brings long-term value to, to institutions who are customers of these solutions, um, that we just couldn't get on legacy solutions.
[00:52:00] Dave Kieffer: stability was great, but that also meant that we didn't have agility when we need it so much in this industry.
[00:52:08] Houman Immen: Hooman? No, I think you summarized it perfectly. I think, it's also risk mitigation with security, the pressures- Yep ... of keeping up with the changes that are happening in our world, and trusting that these SaaS vendors are keeping compliance in mind, data security in mind, but also the functionality needed.
[00:52:27] Houman Immen: they- they've created infrastructure that allows them to make these updates, and these updates are one to many, which means you take this best practice from another customer very similar, another organization that has the same similar challenge. And then us institutions, uh, I- I'm sorry, us partners are really focused on maximizing that, to be able to know what functionality is adopted when, how, and with the world of AI, AI should be embedded in that SaaS solution you talk about, and figure out what makes sense for you from a timing.
[00:52:53] Houman Immen: And adoption becomes easier when you have a SaaS solution.
[00:52:57] Dave Kieffer: Jeff, I wanna, I wanna come back to this one real quickly, 'cause there's sort of an elephant in the room in higher ed this week, which is what's happened with Canvas. And I think what it, what going to SaaS doesn't mean is 100% trust in your vendor and no plan for yourself if something happens.
[00:53:12] Dave Kieffer: so business continuity planning is absolutely critical, as much as it ever was.
[00:53:16] Houman Immen: Sure. Even
[00:53:17] Dave Kieffer: though it gives us, even, even though the, the frequency of that risk might be lower, the impact is still very high. So looking at critical business processes, making sure that the institutions can, survive lo- you know, small to medium, down outages on these solutions.
[00:53:34] Dave Kieffer: None of them are perfect. Uh, it do- it does not relieve us of the responsibility as institutions to make sure we're, we're protected.
[00:53:42] Jeff Miller: Very good. Yeah, good timely message.
[00:53:44] Jeff Miller: Okay, let's do a couple quick hits. We're gonna go fast before my closing comments. I've got two questions, and Hooman, this one is for you.
[00:53:52] Jeff Miller: Th- this is a reference to something you said. Did you say fixed cost for Workday deployment? Can you elaborate?
[00:54:00] Houman Immen: Yes, absolutely. I think,the number one goal for us when we created Optima was to keep, fixed cost and the timeline being, something that for each package makes sense to consume, but not too fast, but not also too long, to be able to keep it on time, on budget, and see the value.
[00:54:17] Houman Immen: And then even our ongoing services, the Optima deployment as a service is, fixed in nature and you know exactly what you're getting. And we're doing the same thing with AWS. We're trying to make sure that you're able to really have a comprehensive business case, and we know the pressure you, face.
[00:54:32] Houman Immen: Every institution is facing that pressure. Uh, you can't really go back and ask for more money. And to Mark's point, if you do due diligence upfront with what resources you need, then it's our job as a partner to keep the implementation fixed cost.
[00:54:44] Jeff Miller: I'm gonna throw one more at you, Shawn, while I'm, presenting my, uh, my, uh, closing slides here.
[00:54:50] Jeff Miller: how comprehensive is your broader technology landscape audit? And, uh, it says, "We're experiencing rising VMware costs. Do you have a solution that might help us break free?" Shawn, do you have an answer for that?
[00:55:03] Shawn Fournier: Yeah, that's great. And I, I'm gonna cover it very quickly, Jeff, being sensitive to time, but it is absolutely thorough.
[00:55:10] Shawn Fournier: So what we do is we evaluate every application stack in the data center and evaluate on that stack whether it should be retired, modernized, re-platformed, refactored, whatever that might be. So it is a thorough TCO, institution-wide, with a roadmap to modernization that you can then prioritize based on your institution's goals for modernization.
[00:55:33] Shawn Fournier: Thank you. Awesome. Fantastic.
[00:55:35] Jeff Miller: That's- that's all the time we've got. We're running a little bit late. So I've got here a contact us slide for, uh, Dave and for the Tambellini Group. and then also, of course, finally for ERPA. Please contact us for any Workday needs or questions you might have. Follow us on LinkedIn.
[00:55:50] Jeff Miller: Here's how you can do all of that. Hey, Dave and Mark especially, thank you for everything you put into this material and your time today, the insights on the Workday journey. Thanks to all of you who joined us today. We hope you found, uh, this discussion helpful.
[00:56:04] Jeff Miller: That's it for now. Uh, look for more webinars to come on a variety of topics of interest to those exploring Workday.
[00:56:12] Jeff Miller: Um, thank you, and we hope that, uh, you have a great rest of your day. Thanks, everybody. Thanks,