Wake Forest University has embarked on a strategic effort to modernize its Student Information System (SIS) and redesign associated processes and services as needed to support the university’s students, faculty, and staff in fulfillment of our educational mission.
The journey to transform our student-based administrative system began in 2017 when the campus started the process to identify, evaluate, and recommend a modern, cloud-based system for a Student Information System (SIS).
Campus Engagement
A two-phased Needs Assessment was deployed. Phase One consisted of a ‘Visioning’ effort to collect requirements and build an understanding of how students, faculty and staff envision a Student Information System meeting their needs. From this assessment, a comprehensive Request for Proposal (RFP) was developed.
The following design attributes were highly ranked across our student, faculty, and staff populations.
Responsive Design
Accessibility
Real Time Data Access
Integration with other systems
Consistent User Experience across roles
Flexibility
Phase Two focussed on the identifying, evaluating and selecting a cloud-based product that would support our vision and requirements. Five prospective SIS vendors were evaluated, and ultimately two were invited to campus.
Overwhelmingly, Workday Student was identified as the product of choice to fulfill Wake Forest’s Student Information System needs.
Workday Student
Access to real-time & reliable data, anywhere.
Workday’s integrated system allows for data inputted to immediately be reflected across the system for all with the appropriate access to see. Process transparency is a highlight of the platform, students will be able to check where their requests are routed and can be immediately notified of changes, such as a prerequisite approval during registration.
Faculty will have access to student information at their fingertips on any device to better build connections with their students and complete administrative functions from anywhere.
Workday is built with several data integrity and audit-check capabilities, ensuring that as we grow with our new system, our data remains accurate to extract reliable insights and drive decision-making on campus.
A system built around the student life cycle.
Workday Student was specifically designed hand-in-hand with higher education partners and continues to rely on their growing higher education customers to optimize and grow the platform. Workday Student supports a student’s academic curiosity with robust opportunities to explore programs of study, build their academic plan, engage with their advisors, seamlessly register for classes, and confirm or realign their degree path.
With multiple opportunities for engagement, students and faculty can augment in-person meetings through digital collaboration. The University will be able to communicate with students in new ways through Workday’s personalized mobile experience.
Ability to evolve with the future.
Workday is continually improving their platform by responding to customer’s needs and developing new features and functionality for institutions to transform the student, faculty, and staff experience. Wake Forest will benefit from Workday’s continuous innovation and investment in their platform, enabling us to maintain a best-in-class suite of technologies to evolve with the changing higher education landscape and student, family, and campus expectations.
Workday’s cloud-based platform provides robust security, scalability, and redundancy, meaning our community will be able to spend less time performing administrative functions and more time focusing on our core academic mission. Leveraging this agile infrastructure better positions us to respond to and support strategic initiatives, student outcomes, and academic engagement for our campus community.
Workday Student in Higher Education
A number of institutions are in the process or have already implemented Workday Student. Learn more about How Workday Student is Transforming the Student Experience in higher education.
