AMP Frequently Asked Questions

The Administrative Modernization Program (AMP) is an ambitious initiative that advances a key action in Oregon State University’s 2024-2030 Strategic Plan, Prosperity Widely Shared, to simplify technology systems, data practices, and policies. Through AMP we will modernize our core administrative systems, update and standardize our processes, and streamline our support capabilities. AMP is poised to pave the way for better institutional agility and exceptional user-friendly design to perform critical behind-the-scenes administrative work. 

AMP will provide an updated data ecosystem, additional automation, and implementation of a new cloud-based Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system, Workday. Our Workday-enabled transformation journey will significantly improve processes and overall experiences, enabling the University to deliver on its mission with a greater impact while simultaneously minimizing administrative burden and cost.  

The expectations and demands on higher education are evolving.: Faculty, staff and students have come to expect real-time, seamless online communication and engagement across various platforms and delivered in ways that feel relevant, contemporary and personalized. They want the ability and flexibility to choose how they engage with OSU — whether remote, in-person or hybrid — and for those capabilities to evolve along with their changing needs. We are currently operating with technology and processes that are over 30 years old. Everything that happens at a university happens through its people and our people deserve tools that allow them to utilize their time and talents to their fullest abilities.  Modernizing our systems and processes through AMP is crucial infor giving us the institutional agility that we need to set OSU up for success in our approach to the ambitious growth and research goals set forward in the strategic plan.

These are some of the features in Workday that align with Prosperity Widely Shared and the future plans to integrate and simplify technology systems, data practices and policies that increase our organizational agility:  

Agility  

• 100% cloud-native to support our agility and need to move quickly and flexibly to meet the university’s needs.  

• Automatic and regular system updates that keep us modern, agile and aligned with best industry practices.  

• In-memory data architecture which ensures fast access to data throughout the suite of applications.  

Security  

• Provides security as a core competency across all of its platforms to protect data and reduce risk  

• Includes Disaster Recovery capability for greater resilience  

• Provides the ability to audit data and workflow transactions 

Fully-Integrated 

• A single platform designed for large organizations and features strong financial and human core management capabilities.  

• All-in-one system that allows a full picture of the people, financial, and student interactions and dependencies of our data and environment.  

• One consistent system with expanded capabilities that will help us streamline our complex technical environment including the reduction of duplicative systems across the university.  

Higher Education Experience  

• A focus on higher education and addressing the complexities of operating within a higher education institution. 

User Experience and Automation  

• Streamlined and efficient business and financial processes that are digital, configurable, consistent, and automated, reducing paper-based and labor-intensive manual processes.  

• Capabilities for mobile interactions and self-service that will bring OSU to what our employees and students expect of their employment and education experience.  

• Self-service capabilities to better manage finance and HR tasks such as payroll, time tracking, expenses, and reporting.  

Enhanced financial planning, modeling, reporting and analytics. 

• Provides real-time visibility into data and helps transform that data into information and insights. Data and insights around costs, transactions, revenue drivers, employee hiring, retention, and development, and to help meet evolving goals. 

Improved opportunities to engage, enhance, and train employees. 

• Empowers managers to focus on skills-based talent strategies; consolidate employee training requirements, fulfillment, and tracking; and utilize data-driven analytics to foster growth in a diverse environment. 

We are focusing on HR and Finance because that's where our immediate need is. When implementing a new ERP, HR and Finance are the foundational steps, and they allow for the reallocation of resources. When we have streamlined our administrative processes and begin realizing benefits from an automated platform, we will have more bandwidth to begin the transformation on the student component.

While OSU has made real progress toward our strategic goals, we understand that to be truly agile and address current frustrations, we need to modernize our administrative environment through both the technology we use and the processes we develop. In fall 2022, University Information & Technology (UIT) launched the silent planning phase of AMP. Key projects were designed and launched to lay the foundations for AMP, such as Enterprise Data Ecosystem and Smart Access/identity. Since then, we have been hard at work to ensure OSU community members are informed on both how and what we change. Thus far, we have met with over 800 OSU faculty and staff across the university community to learn of significant administrative pain points and goals for future ways of working; we have hosted two "Change Management Bootcamps" for leaders across OSU to establish guiding and design principles for AMP decision-making; and we have made significant progress in assembling the AMP program team and its partners. University leaders from our business units and IT have collaboratively selected Workday as our future technology solution based on the needs of OSU community members.  

A Closer Look at Community Engagement So Far:  

Starting in the spring of 2023 and continuing into 2024, the program teams have been engaging leaders across OSU to ensure a collective understanding of the scope of AMP, the importance of a shared vision of success, the resources required, the benefits expected, and the risks involved. We recognize that technology systems are complex and that understanding the complexity of the link between process redesign and system capabilities is critical. As a result, AMP is prioritizing extensive communications and education. UIT has already launched a podcast series that introduces foundational steps involved in the replacement of core administrative systems. We are currently building foundational messages and a "Change Champion" network to ensure all colleges and departments have access to two-way conversations with AMP. We aim to regularly share critical information across our community in ways that are convenient and easily digestible, supporting a shared understanding of AMP goals and accompanying actions. Additional communications and resources will be available to the OSU community as we move forward with AMP. 

AMP Partners: 

OSU will not take on this ambitious work alone. We will need significant help with organizational change management, business process redesign, and staff augmentation. OSU will collaborate with outside partners that specialize in higher education digital transformations to deliver on the AMP vision. These partners will help us cultivate collaboration from across and outside the university and find equitable solutions for a broad and diverse collection of customers and stakeholders.  

Going Forward:  

As OSU employees and external partners join the AMP team, they will collaboratively refine a project timeline with details on the next steps. By summer 2024, we will officially kick off AMP and establish avenues for sharing AMP updates. The AMP implementation team will collaborate will form cross-functional project team to determine the future state of business processes within the Workday experience. Throughout 2024, OSU faculty and staff will have opportunities to meet the AMP team, begin learning about Workday, and share feedback through surveys and engagement forums. 

Stay up to date on the AMP transformation journey.  

Organizational Change Management (OCM) refers to the people side of change. Change management is a set of processes, tools and techniques that will enable OSU to adapt to change with minimal resistance and limited disruption to business. The goal of our OCM team is to minimize disruption and support the community in adapting to new ways of working that are required to achieve the future state of full Workday adoption.  

OSU understands the importance of change management and has established a dedicated Organizational Change Management team, led by our OCM Lead Suzanne Grey. AMP is also engaging the services of OCM external experts who will assist us with developing a common framework, shared language for change management and a change champion program across the university. 

Keeping the OSU community informed about AMP and opportunities for engagement is critical to our success. Communication about AMP will be disseminated through various channels such as university-wide emails, videos, reports and updates on our website and AMP intranet site. Informational events and workshops for OSU community members will be hosted to focus on the program and its impacts. We strongly encourage you to check in and stay connected for the most current AMP updates. To support ongoing engagement, we will solicit routine feedback and provide opportunities for stakeholders to contribute ideas and perspectives. Please keep an eye on your emails and our website for invitations to engagement events and opportunities.

Implementation partners and the AMP team will work closely with functional and technical supervisors and leaders to determine an intentional strategy that will identify the people needed to realize our goals. We will work with functional and technical units to identify the personnel resources needed to prevent overload of employees working on AMP projects. We have identified several options to augment staff members, including stopping lower priority work, finding other employees with the skills and capacity to fill behind, and external contractor support from staff augmentation partners.

The AMP Guiding and Design Principles will set expectations and provide guidance for teams throughout the program as we make decisions and design OSU business processes and technology for the future. The principles will empower functional experts on project teams to make decisions. The AMP Steering Committee, part of AMP’s governance structure, will guide AMP and monitor the success of all activities to completion. Additionally, we will learn from implementation partners and peer institutions that have undergone organizational and digital transformations to ensure OSU makes informed decisions and mitigates potential risks. 

We will continue to host open forums and focus groups for the OSU community to learn more about AMP, ask questions, and share insights and expertise to ensure the future state of OSU’s administrative processes and functions meet the university’s needs and strategic goals. As part of our change management planning, communications planning and program planning, AMP will continue to provide opportunities for our experts and community to be involved and inform the future of AMP.

We’ve selected a group of users specific to HR, finance, budget and planning experience as focus group participants. We've also engaged groups of associate deans, unit directors, extension directors, experiment station directors, administrative support, office managers, executive assistants, and administrative assistants across the university community who often take on the workload of doing recruitment and finance, as well as our partners in the research office who work with grant financial management.

We recognize that large-scale transformation involves some degree of risk and turbulence, particularly when replacing outdated systems. Even change that is necessary and the best course of action for long-term success can be uncomfortable and frustrating. This transformation is a long-term journey, and we will prepare and support the OSU community for change by mitigating risks wherever possible. 

Experiences of other universities and institutions suggest several key elements support the success of transformations like AMP which you can read more about on our Risk Management page. 

AMP will help connect our people and systems in new ways that make it easier to get work done. By moving to one primary platform for most of our HR, Finance, and Research work, AMP will reduce the number of systems we work in and allow us to replace approximately 20 IT systems — several of which are outdated and require manual procedures. By migrating our current outdated systems to a next-generation platforms, we enable seamless data sharing and collaboration across functions such as HR, finance, research administration, and more. This not only minimizes silos but also facilitates collaboration, promotes best practices across the university, and improves information-sharing as we adopt new ways of working together.