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.

Pie Chart depicting 432 students (49%), 214 Staff (31%), and 138 faculty (20%) completed the evaluation feedback form for the SIS evaluation.
The ensuing evaluation consisted of quantitative and qualitative feedback from 700 individuals composed of students, faculty, and staff 

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.

photo of student on a mobile device.

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. 

Amherst College Logo
Berklee Logo
Brandeis Logo
Furman Logo
Santa Clara Logo
Smith College Logo
Rochester University Logo
Washington and Lee Logo
Wellesley Logo