Deakin Uni opts for Workday in finance overhaul

Deakin University has kicked off an overhaul of its back office finance functions that will see it consolidate systems onto Workday's cloud-based financial management platform.

The university will shift all of its accounting, procurement management and reporting processes onto the one platform in an effort to simplify the procedures for staff.

It will see the university retire the Oracle E-Business Suite financials platform that has been responsible for managing its financial processes for the past 18 years.

Deakin had been forced to go out to tender for a new finance platform in 2016 after finding itself unable to further upgrade the Oracle system.

It made clear at the time that the new platform was to have minimal or no customisations.

Deakin today said the transformation program had recently moved from the planning stage and into architecture design, with the help of partner KPMG.

It is planning to go live with Workday at the start of January next year to coincide with the beginning of its financial cycle.

The transformation is expected to result in "significantly more efficient finance services" for the university, which has more than 4200 staff and 54,000 students.

Around 150 people split across separate teams currently manage the finance ecoysystem.