Case Study: Washington State University achieves greater R1 research agility with Workday Adaptive Planning

A flexible foundation for greater R1 success

Washington State University needed to modernize its 40-year-old mainframe-based administrative systems to reduce risk, close a $30 million budget deficit, improve planning, and support its goal of becoming a top-tier R1 research university. The university turned to Workday Adaptive Planning and the broader Workday platform, including financial management, HR, payroll, recruiting, and time tracking capabilities, to replace paper-based and siloed processes with a more flexible cloud foundation.

Workday Adaptive Planning helped Washington State University implement unified, automated workflows and real-time reporting across finance and HR. As a result, the university cut reporting delays from 30 days to on-demand insights, speeding administrative insights by 100%, improving efficiency and agility, and enabling better budget planning that supports a three-year plan to eliminate the operational deficit.

Washington State University

Stacy Pearson

Chief Financial Officer