Case Study: The University of Arizona achieves an 80% reduction in grant accounting workflow time with Workday Adaptive Planning

Engineered for Ease and Insights

The College of Engineering at the University of Arizona faced a fragmented, time-consuming grant and contract management process across roughly 200 awards and more than $25 million in annual expenditures. Departments used disparate systems that required extensive manual data entry and “shadow bookkeeping,” leaving leaders without timely, roll-up views of project-period budgets, encumbrances, and actuals.

By implementing Workday Adaptive Planning and engaging grant accountants in the design, the college created a unified budgeting, forecasting, and reporting solution that cut supplemental reporting work by about 80% (previously more than 300 hours/month), turning multi‑hour tasks into six‑minute reports. The result: faster, clearer decision-making, more capacity for analysis and proposal development, and a scalable model the university can apply to free up staff for higher-value activities.

The University of Arizona

Lisa Rulney

Assistant Dean, Finance & Administration, College of Engineering