Future-ready: Rochester's Workday success story

• The University of Rochester and University of Rochester Medical Center modernized their outdated HR and payroll systems by implementing Workday HCM, Workday Payroll, and Effort Reporting, building on prior deployments of Workday Financial Management and Workday Student to enhance scalability and integration.
• The project emphasized collaboration across stakeholders, tailoring solutions with Workday Extend and carefully sequencing activities to ensure a smooth transition without disrupting academic or financial operations.
• The transformation delivered significant outcomes such as eliminating paper processes, reducing time-to-hire by 26 days, saving hundreds of staff hours annually, and enabling real-time data transparency — positioning the university with a unified, future-ready ERP platform that drives efficiency and long-term sustainability.

After more than two decades of operating on a legacy human capital management (HCM) platform, the University of Rochester (UR) and University of Rochester Medical Center (URMC) replaced their HCM and payroll systems with a modern cloud-based platform.

This case study explores how UR tackled the implementation of Workday HCM, Workday Payroll, and Effort Reporting to streamline operations, improve the user experience, and drive long-term value. UR was unique to the industry in that they deployed Workday Financial Management and Workday Student first, followed by Workday HCM and Workday Payroll. This success story uncovers unique challenges and solutions to this deployment sequencing approach along with strategies that guided the large-scale initiative and project completion.

UR and URMC faced a significant challenge: modernize their disparate, aging technology to enhance administrative services to students, faculty, and medical professionals. Decades-old, the highly customized legacy system was difficult to maintain, prone to error, and unequipped to accommodate new tools and technologies, such as artificial intelligence.

As a tier-one research (R1) university and nationally recognized medical center with over 35,000 employees, $4.3 billion in net patient revenue, and 1,500 beds, UR needed an advanced, scalable HR and payroll solution to support the needs of its complex academic medical ecosystem.

When the Workday HCM implementation began, the university was already live on Workday Financial Management and Workday Student; therefore the team conducted significant regression testing to ensure that the new configuration was layered in delicately without any data loss or reporting errors.

UR’s goal was not just technological modernization, but a complete re-envisioning of the employee experience through AI tools, process streamlining, enhanced integration, and improved data transparency — all in support of a broader vision to empower its workforce across education, research, and healthcare.

The engagement began with a deep dive into the current-state processes and system architecture. Recognizing the extensive customization within the legacy environment, the team worked hand-in-hand with stakeholders across the university to identify gaps between the current functionality and Workday capabilities. Cross-functional teams collaborated to prioritize and execute various project stages, ensuring alignment with institutional needs and future-state goals.

The team worked closely throughout all key project workstreams — project management, functional and technical design, change management, and training — maintaining rigorous oversight and weekly touchpoints with university executives. This ensured the project remained anchored to its guiding principles and institutional objectives.

Additionally, the team placed a strong focus on leveraging Workday Extend to build custom solutions that didn’t exist out of the box, such as integrating tuition reimbursement processing between Workday Student and Workday HCM, and launching “Ask Mel,” an AI-enabled chatbot connected to the university’s knowledge base, to answer HR questions in real time.

Finally, to ensure a smooth integration with Workday Financial Management and Workday Student, the team prioritized frequent and thorough collaboration with stakeholders across the provost’s office, financial operations, and HR for precise go-live planning. Careful planning and systematic sequencing of activities enabled a smooth HR and payroll transition, ensuring uninterrupted academic and financial operations.

UR successfully implemented the most significant technology transformation in the institution’s 174-year history, achieving a seamless go-live and successfully executing payroll for 35,000 employees. The transition also marked the full retirement of the university’s long-standing legacy system. Although this represented one of the most substantial transformations undertaken by UR, success in the program and its objectives was achieved through dedicated leadership, a strong commitment to change, and a bold vision for the future of the institution.

Change at this scale takes leadership, communication, and trust. By aligning closely with our stakeholders and guiding principles, we ensured this transformation was not only successful at go-live but also sustainable for the long term.”
-Julie Myers, UR vice president for information technology and CIO

Key achievements from the project include:

• 100% elimination of paper-based processes
• 1 FTE saved through implementation of custom Tuition Benefits application
• 500+ hours of support team time saved annually through Ask Mel chatbot
• 26-day reduction in average time to fill open roles
• 100% real-time effort certification auditing
• 50% increase in transactions initiated via self-service
• 450+ hours saved annually through streamlined Merit processing

With the implementation complete, the UR has modernized its technology environment, delivered efficiency to its operations, and unified its enterprise application landscape across Finance, HR, Payroll, and Student. By implementing a unified ERP platform and automated workflows, UR has established a system that supports ongoing operations, enables data-driven decision making, and facilitates the ability to scale and adapt its business in the future.