Name: Empowering Philanthropy through Unified Data: The Kauffman Foundation’s Path to Operational Excellence with Workday
Uploaded: 2025-08-21T18:17:07.395Z
Duration: 47 min 40 s
Description: Empowering Philanthropy through Unified Data: The Kauffman Foundation’s Path to Operational Excellence with Workday

Transcript for "Empowering Philanthropy through Unified Data: The Kauffman Foundation’s Path to Operational Excellence with Workday": Hello, everyone, and welcome to our webinar this morning, Empowering Philanthropy Through Unified Data, the Kauffman Foundation's Path to Operational Excellence with Workday. We're just gonna give folks a a couple minutes to join, so we'll get started in, in just a few minutes. Just give it another minute or two or another thirty seconds more like. Oh, actually. Okay. Why don't we go ahead and get started? Can everyone see my screen? Jeff and Sam, if you can confirm for me? Sure can. Awesome. Thank you. Alright. Well, welcome everyone again. My name is Michelle Adams O'Regan. I'm the industry director for public services and education industries at Workday, and I am so excited to be hosting and introducing our session today. So before we jump in, I'll just give a little bit of housekeeping and a little bit of keeping and a little bit of background. Hold on a sec. There we go. First, this is our safe harbor product statement, which indicates that no decision should be made on the basis of any forward looking statements about product or strategies that we make in the webinar today. We don't plan on those, but just FYI. This session will be recorded and will be available to view afterwards along with the audio transcript, and we will be using the q and a function. So please put your questions in there throughout, and we will be answering as many as we have time for at the end of the session. But you can put them in there anytime, and we will we will hopefully get to them at the end. So I'm just gonna start us off with, some kind of level setting facts and figures about Workday as a company. What is Workday? We led the way taking finance and HR to the cloud two decades ago. This is our twentieth anniversary this year. That was just the start. We've been on a growth journey ever since. We've expanded our offerings from HR to finance and beyond, and we are a leader in AI, which, you can see on here has been built into the platform since 2014. And we have a relentless focus on innovation, and that's continued to fuel our growth. If you are not familiar with with us, Workday offers enterprise management cloud applications for HR, finance, analytics and planning, budgeting, spend management, grants management, all within one unified AI platform. So what you see here is, our product portfolio, and then surrounding it, all of the things about the Workday platform and community, that, that help to, increase, the options for our customers, and their abilities to increase their agility, their transformation, and their performance by managing their people and their money together on the platform. With AI is built into the core, so you can see down on the bottom there, the Illuminate, intelligent data core. And nonprofits have been Workday customers almost since our beginnings. And over the past ten years, we've built momentum fifteen years, really. We've built momentum among nonprofits globally. We continue to grow and to find new and more innovative ways to support mission based organizations. We do have a dedicated nonprofit practice at Workday, and we have actually over 700 nonprofit customers globally. And those customers have operations in over a 125 countries around the world. That's a conservative estimate. And as you can see from this slide, this just gives you a sense of who our customers are. We support nonprofits across the breadth of this very diverse sector, all sizes, all missions, NGOs, public media and arts organizations, faith based and social welfare providers, foundations and philanthropic orgs, professional associations, research institutions. I hope I haven't missed anything, but everything in between, to help support these organizations as they work every day to achieve their mission. So with that in mind, I just wanna finally share this quote, from our cofounder, Anil Bousry, because it speaks to a key element of the trusted partnership that Workday has with our nonprofit customers, which is that shared commitment to changing the world for the better. And so with, you know, as we navigate today's uncertain and rapidly changing world, that's what we hope investment in cloud based technology and the responsible ethical use of all technologies will help us all do. So today, we're gonna be hearing from a leader at one of our incredible customer organizations about their Workday journey alongside one of our fantastic partners. So with that, I wanna welcome our speakers. We are very lucky to have with us today Jeff Vanhoven, the vice president of client strategic partnerships at Crossview, and Samantha Shieb, the business met business systems manager at the Kauffman Foundation. Thank you guys so much for being with us today. So, Jeff, just to just to start us off before we before we, let Sam have the floor and tell us more about the Kauffman story, if you could introduce yourself and, Crossview just to set the stage for the audience, you know, on the important role that you guys play as a partner for nonprofit. Yeah. Happy to, Michelle. Thanks for that warm welcome. So, first off, just thanks to everyone that's joining us today. I know that that everyone has a lot going on, I'm sure. So just wanna, say thank you for sharing your time with us. I'm Jeff Vanhoven. I serve as CrossFuse client strategic partnerships leader, which really means that I have the joy of collaborating with our entire portfolio of nonprofit clients and partners, to drive delivery success and account planning. And then more tactically, my team and I serve as advisors, tour guides, we'll say, and risk mitigators on engagements, across really all of our offerings for clients just like the Kauffman Foundation. If we go to the next slide yeah. A little about a little bit about Crossview. We are an end to end consulting and work based services partner that has been in the ecosystem since 2014. And and really we specialize in supporting clients across the regulated industries, but especially nonprofit that are looking for, that transformative Workday journey and a partnership starting early with strategic planning all the way through deployment and into post production support. I I'll just spend a little bit of time here. I mean, helping nonprofit organizations more efficiently deliver on their mission has been a a really core and strategic investment focus and personally a passion of Crossview over the past several years in partnership with Workday. And we're really excited and proud about the key solutions and expertise we bring to nonprofits of industries, especially across, you know, social and welfare mission organization, foundations like Kaufman, and then professional and trade associations just to name a few. We we really find that, each nonprofit brings its own unique nuance or opportunity for efficiency that we love helping solution for. And I'm just excited to explore this a bit more with with Sam today from Kauffman. So Sam, I'll hand it over to you. Yeah. Thanks so much, Jeff. Go ahead, Sam. Why don't you start us off by telling us a little bit about yourself, about Kauffman, about your Workday journey? Okay. Awesome. My name is Samantha Shibe. I am the business systems manager at the Kauffman Foundation. I've been here ten years. So I've played roles such as the accounts payable manager, analyst, senior analyst. And now as my current position, I really help administer our operating systems within the foundation to make sure that security is right, the business processes are set up as expected, and that users are able to use the systems and get the data that they need on a day to day basis. So it's really fun. It speaks to the nerve in me to make reports and design systems. A little bit about the Kauffman Foundation. So mister Kaye was really into, wanting to build economic mobility to just regardless of anybody's race or gender or geography. And so we have stayed committed to his initial, passions for education, entrepreneurship in Kansas City. And, he really believed that, through the power of education and entrepreneurship that we could have economic mobility throughout. We recently went through a strategic refresh where we found new grant pathways or refreshed our grant pathways, I guess you could say. So now we're we're committed to funding and supporting college access, career, workforce, and entrepreneurship. Phenomenal. Such a great mission. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna stop sharing here, and, we can kinda get into a little bit more of, of the story, Kaufman and Workday. So, why don't we start off with some kind of before and after? So, Sam, what was the state of your systems and your processes, all the things that you foresee at Kaufman pre Workday, and then post Workday? So when we started looking at a solution, we had multiple systems. So we had a system for payroll, a system for benefits, a system for performance review, our financial system, our reporting system. So it was all segmented and they all had different administrators and the integrations were manual and the reporting was horrible. So we decided to go forward with Workday and we consolidated about six or seven systems into one, which meant we have now automated integrations with our benefit providers, with our financial institutions. And it's just given us the opportunity to really look at our business process holistically and really understand how we can get the most bang for our buck, do best practices, follow our policies, and do that all within one centralized system. We also, when we first launched, we decided to take that administration piece and put that hat on one or two people just until we we understood the system. Lately, we've been starting to delegate that out a little bit more. But, being such a small foundation, we started with the centralized administration. Makes sense. So, let's see. So let me ask a question that, that, you know, we love to ask at Workday. Why Workday? You know, why why why did you use Workday? And, how how did the implementation process kind of unfold for you? Well, why not Workday? Right? No. I will. That's fine. Workday. That's beautiful. No. It was just when we were looking at systems, the user interface with Workday was just so great. I mean, I don't know another way to say it. It was it was easy to navigate. It offered everything we needed and a lot more. So it it just seemed like a natural fit for us, and it it really housed everything that we needed from an HR to a finance to reporting, and it's just been a great solution for us. Awesome. We love to hear that. Well, then okay. Let's ask the follow-up question. Why Crossview? Since, you know, they were your implementation partners and the folks that were kind of, you know, in the trenches with you guys through it and and still today. So why Crossview? They're still stuck with us today. No. So when we closed Workday, we decided, okay. We have to find our implementation team. So we we did. We interviewed a few different, options. Crossview was just a smaller team, which we it spoke to our hearts because we're a smaller team. Their culture more aligned with ours. And, I mean, even just our first conversations, it was like we were talking to our best friends. You know, if we just clicked, we could work well together. And, oh, like you mentioned, they have been with us ever since we went live. They're still our post production support. So it's been a really great partnership. We're very lucky. Awesome. I feel like that cultural fit, is what makes your vendors not just vendors but partners. Yeah. And that's what Workday always wants to be and what all of our partners are to us. And we want all of us to be that to our customers. So that's fantastic to hear. Jeff, you wanna wanna comment on that? Sure. And I'll just say thanks, Dan. I think we're we couldn't think of a better team to be stuck with, so to speak. So, I mean, look, I I think I just agree holistically with with Sam here, Michelle. I for for deployments of this scale and importance, right, these are really important programs that organizations are taking on to better their mission, and especially in kind of the remote setting that we needed to to operate in. Establishing that tone, of trust and partnership really early has proven imperative and and kinda pay dividends throughout the project. We we agree completely. It's it's part of our, core values that culture is important. Right? And something we wanna deliver in day in day out. But the good news here, it too, is that it doesn't just come down to that organic chemistry between the people. It helps, of course. We also can kind of build the confidence together through the implementation approach itself, the one that we agree on and we we iterate on throughout the project. And that comes, that comes with as well the governance structure that we established, the tools that help us along the way, etcetera. So I know we'll probably talk a little bit more about that. But for now, I mean, we're just so thankful for Kaufman's partnering mindset, along with their active participation in in the working methodology and the deployment process over the past, gosh, six years, Sam, I think it's been almost, kind of buying in together, right, to what's ahead of the project's, start and then throughout. Love it. So you you mentioned remote environment. And I think, you know, there have been tons of challenges that nonprofits have encountered over the last couple years, COVID being one of the ones that caused that remote environment that we all had to navigate. And, and certainly, you know, doing a major digital transformation, you know, is is challenging in general. So, talk to us about some of the challenges that you guys faced while you were implementing, and and and this is for Sam. How did how did Workday and Crossview help you get through those? Yeah. So we actually were fortunate enough to be pre COVID during the design phase. So Crossview partners, they came out here. They spent weeks with us here in Kansas City, like, really diving into our business processes and and giving some really good suggestions on best practices and how to use Workday to benefit us the most. And then one day, we went into the office and they said, okay. Go home. And we were still implementing. So they were like, oh my goodness. So we we went home and Crossview just held our hand through the whole thing. I mean, they were getting used to working remote just in the same time that the rest of the world was. Rolling it together. Oh, wow. Yes. I tell you what, it was so fun. And I don't know if implementations are supposed to be fun, but it was because, I mean, we just had great partners and we, did it from the comfort of our homes in our jammies most of the time. So, you know, it was a great environment. Awesome. You know, and, so that's I love to hear that it's fun, because ideally, that's what it would be. Jeff, you wanna you wanna comment on that a little bit on your experience with the with the implementation and on the work you've done here? Sure. Look. And and, Sam, I'm sure the team kind of missed being in Kansas City and all the barbecue during the during the COVID, you know, as that was starting up. But I I think for me, I'll I'll just reemphasize here the importance of building that right groundwork in the relationship early in the deployment. And whether that's together on-site or remote, both are feasible. But doing so really helps keep everyone harmonized. There is a lot that will be asked of any organization going through a program like this. And as you learn the system, you're starting to also think about all of the art of the possible. Having that foundation that we establish allows for the honest dialogue to keep design and conversations really focused and on track in line with project goals, in this case, for for the Kauffman Foundation. And I'll add to that establishing a I mentioned this a little bit before. Strong governance model early, iterating it, revisiting that model to see if it works throughout the deployment, provides structure and creates the space for our teams, to raise questions, have focused conversations, and and hit some challenges head on together. Yeah. Yeah. And the one one of the things I also have heard, from lots of, customers with their implementation experiences is that, the good communication, the harmonization, and also keeping the mission at the center, is another thing that really helps to keep everybody on track for everyone, the whole team. And when I say the whole team, I mean, Crossview and Kaufman and Workday, you know, to to always be kinda keeping that at the forefront. So so with that in mind, you know, that's what is that's the real reason why any nonprofit organization, wants to realize operational excellence. Right? It's to further their mission. It's to further mister k's vision. So so, Sam, let me ask you. How did Workday, impact your team's ability to focus on their work in the organization's mission? I mean, of course, the technology doesn't, you know, doesn't do the work, doesn't achieve the mission. You know, the hope is that it it frees up time, resources, space, you know, a better strategy for you guys. So so talk a little bit about that if you wouldn't mind. Yeah. So exactly. I mean, it streamlined, all of our processes, and it did allow for those manual interventions, to become automated so that our analysts could analyze data and do their daily responsibilities and not worry about, just systems talking to one another. Mhmm. So, when we so we went live in 2020. And about three years ago, we were challenged by our CFO to get back to the basics. So that was our team goal. And, we realized that it was so much easier to do this with Workday, with CrossVUE, because we all knew the system, and it was easy to look at the business processes. And we all were speaking that same vocabulary that you don't have when you have the segmented systems. So this year, our challenge is cross training our backfills. So if you're out of the office, who's gonna run payroll or, you know It doesn't seem yeah. So it's been great because all of our associates, they know what Workday is. They know how to navigate through it. And it's such an easy system to navigate that the cross training is more about the why and not so much how. Yeah. And it's it's just given us such dynamic reporting and dashboards that, you know, whether it's our fabulous AP specialists that are looking at what payments are outstanding to even our upper management that's looking at workforce development. You know, we have these dashboards and these reports that are at our fingertips with real life data. So the after has been great and has been able to allow us to streamline, I think it's the best word, and allow us to really focus on our mission and getting the job done and being that, back the house support for our impact officers and our other team members that are out there in the community. See, I love this. I wanna, mention two things here that I love. One is, the reporting that you mentioned because I've definitely had, nonprofit CFOs and finance folks, you know. And and I once was in that world myself, you know, knowing how we have to work overnight for a board meeting. You know, that that all of that can be very difficult to get the data together and current by the time you finally deliver the the report. And, you know, I definitely feel like being able to deliver that much more easily is a huge plus. So I'm so happy to hear that you guys are experiencing that. You know? And then the other thing is you mentioned a number of times the, the user experience, you know, and the shared experience that, you know, that consumer grade experience. I always think about what we expect of technology in our everyday lives. You know, we expect it to be user friendly. And why should we expect anything different when we're, you know, at our jobs, when we're in our office? So, being able to provide that, the hope is that it makes the working lives of, you know, the folks that dedicate every day, you know, to nonprofit work easier. So speaking of people, because, you know, technology is technology, but, you know, it's only as successful as its adoption. It's only as successful as the people, you know, that that can get on get on board and, you know, be using it. People are just the center of that, and change can be hard. Now this is a while ago that you guys made that shift. But I think it's a good lesson for folks listening maybe to hear a little bit more about how you handled that in that training and adoption. It sounds like you're handling the iterations of it really well moving forward. But how did that kind of initially roll out for you? Yeah. So when we first went live, Crossview was very adamant that we take the Workday learning. And thank goodness we did because, we they would say things to us and we wouldn't understand it. And then we took the Workday, training courses and we're like, oh, that's what they were talking about. Okay. That makes sense. So taking that learning has, the people actually using the system, gave us so much confidence and, just the ability to be able to train our associates. So we went live with finance HCL, both of them. Then Mhmm. Right after we went live, we did performance management, then we did advanced comp, and, then we did procurement. And we just recently rolled out expense. And, we did an initial training of here's what expense looks like. And the the person that did that training, you know, sat down with everybody and was like, listen, I know that change is hard and we went from concur to work day and I will be here. I will have office hours if anybody needs help. And I was talking to her about it and I was like, so how's, like, office hours going? Are a lot of people coming? And she's like, oh my gosh, Sam. Like, nobody shows up. Everybody's able to use the system without me holding their hand. So the adoption has been great because I can't I'm just gonna keep repeating myself because it's just a great tool. It's easy to navigate. It's intuitive. That's great to hear. So, you may have answered this, and I'm so sorry if you did send me. We do have a question in the chat. You implemented payroll and time and absence along with HCM. Yes? Okay. I just need to make sure. So the answer is yes to the question in the chat. So, you know, Jeff, Sam mentioned, you know, Crossview insisting on the training, which is awesome. So your thoughts on that? Yes. We tried to be kind of loving parents in that way. Right? To give the right, give the right tools upfront. But, I mean, it it the reality of it is, I I I agree with Sam. I mean, adoption in this case is so directly tied to training and engagement from the group from the very beginning of the project and not just trusting. We're all smart. We'll pick it up. You know, consuming the Workday delivered training early in the deployment journey, you know, is not just homework for the team. Right? The training truly helps equip clients for, kinda more well informed conversations fairly soon into the deployment, but especially later in the project. We're talking about critical design sessions, testing phases, having work stream calls weekly. Right? The ability to dive right into more complex concepts as part of that broader paradigm shift is all made more possible by taking the training. So, the way we look at it is just coming together early as a PMO to intentionally map out the training plan along with, you know, an organization's overall capacity planning model. Those two things together, build that initial project, training plan, and those activities help manage the deployment workload and team bandwidth later, while significantly improving adoption and team engagement. So they really just go hand in hand there. And the sooner we find organizations do consume the training, the more quickly we can jump in to more complex solutioning. More value. More more value faster. Yeah. I mean, makes sense to me. So well, let's, let's get on all we were talking about training. We're talking about, you know, post implementation. Let's get it even a little bit further into that. You know, what happens after you go live, after that sort of initial phase. You know, Sam, what were some of the kinda key learnings and improvements that you guys made post implementation? Because that that's when we say this is a journey, you know. It's there's always gonna be we hope you're gonna continue to expand your footprint and enhance, you know, your your tech infrastructure, you know, for many years. But even just as part of that initial transformation, you know, there's there's gonna be that sort of progression. So talk about that a little. So we utilized, the launch method, which when we were for those that don't know what the launch method is, it it's like they shove everything into what feels like four weeks. So your design, your your testing, your go live. It was more than four weeks, but it it was a very shortened timeline. But I will say things that we did well was we had our own project manager. So Crossview had theirs and we had our own, and they would talk, you know, several times a week just to make sure that both teams were still on on track. You know, like, Crossview offered a lot of testing scripts that we use, but, we had to have somebody make sure everybody was still staying up to, expectations and if there were problems. So that that project manager played a key role for us. I would say take the work day training as early as you can. There were some trainings that we took a little bit later than I think we should have Mhmm. Just to have a better design discussion and be more knowledgeable about what Crossview was asking of us and about our processes. And I think being open minded to your implementation specialist. So when Crossview said, okay. We know you do a, b, and c, but industry best practice in with Workday, maybe we need to do b, c, d. Yeah. We were very receptive to that and understood that they were the experts. And as long as we got the end product that we needed and stayed in compliance, that we would be okay. So we have continued our partnership across you, and we have launched, like I said earlier, our performance management, advanced comp, procurement, and expense. And I think something that has helped us have a big win is just having that partnership and that trust in one another. Mhmm. So a lot of pros there. Little bit of con. We're taking the learn the learning a little bit later, but, you know, we did it and we continue to take learning through, you know, throughout the years to if somebody comes in and wants to learn how to do reporting. Alright. Workday offers, you know, really great tools. Mhmm. Yeah. And, I mean, I think, the the best practices element there is kind of critical, particularly with launch. So launch is are, sort of, faster deployment methodology that's based on best practices from thousands of of implementations. And, you know, every organization is unique and has unique needs, and and that's what we're here for, obviously, to make you know, to help make it work for you. But, recognizing that, well, do not doing what we call lifting and shifting because, lots of times people just wanna cram sort of existing, maybe not best practices, because god knows we all have those, you know, into the new system, instead of making a change to a best practice. But, ultimately, it's, you know, for the, you know, the furtherment of the organization. So so yeah. So that's my sense. But, Jeff, let's let's hear your thoughts about postproduction. Yeah. Happy to. So, I mean, you know, I I'm really happy that, you know, Kaufman really embraced the Workday methodology. I think that is a major key to success, and I think part of that is understanding that not everything will be, you know, conceived or delivered or fully fleshed out by GoLive. Right? And so that's where the notion of post production support can be really handy. And I think that this applies really to any organization, just not not just not just nonprofits. And so when we talk about post production support, we think about really a scalable and tailored overall experience based on where an organization may be and their readiness and overall workday journey and timeline. In this case, with Kauffman, you know, we really view our relationship as as really a helping hand for Kauffman, whether it's tier two tickets, you know, one off things that come up, or even a wholesale rolling adoption of new Workday solutions. Sam mentioned going live with Workday expenses, right, as part of their journey. And that's just part of any organization's evolution within the Workday product and looking to expand as they do. But, like, I'll to say it a little differently, you know, we we we accomplish a lot during the deployment, but but go live is often the starting point for most most organizations. And so during the initial deployment, we established the tools and frameworks, to capture as best as possible those those nice to haves, those post go live or road map items, that ideally help rationalize what post go live looks like and where Kaufman may want to go or other organizations may wanna go as part of their target operating operating model in future state. So that's a conversation we don't just have, you know, a week before go live. We start that conversation early to start to think about, yes, these are the confines of our deployment and what we will accomplish for your goals and the mission. But what's later? What's to come? And how do we get there together? Mhmm. Yeah. It's that set up for a long term success, which is phenomenal. So speaking of success, that was an excellent segue, to my next question. Let's talk about value realized. You know, you guys you guys have been live for a long time. And so what impact has Workday actually actually had? You talk you've talked a little bit about some the streamlining and, you know, making processes easy easier, but I'd love to hear more, Sam, if you wouldn't mind sharing on, you know, your KPIs. Yeah. So I think KPIs can be qualitative and quantitative. So, yeah, I can pull a report that says our payables are met within x amount of days, and I know our team does that. But I I think the things that hold more value is things such as our adoption rate and, our engagement with our associates and the usability of the tool so that when you do have to do an expense report, which is not everybody's favorite thing to do, you get it done quickly so that you can get back to fulfilling, you know, mister Kaufman's mission, mister Kaufman's legacy. I think that, I can't express enough about the dashboards. They have been phenomenal. We have them for, our finance team. We have them for our workforce planning. So when our department leads are talking with our talent and culture department about what what headcount looks like, or what merit increases look like, it's it's in the dashboard. They don't have to go hunting for the information. I think other things that have been great is just the security that, Workday offers. Not even so much from a permission standpoint, but from a documentation standpoint. You know? We can put confidential information into Workday and know that only certain people in our talent and culture department can see that. And so they don't have to hold as many paper files in their office. It's all in one place. Mhmm. Mhmm. Yeah. Security is is a tremendous benefit for sure. So we're really happy that you that you do feel that. So, let's talk about the support structure that you have in place. So I think, you know, Jeff mentioned governance at the beginning and, you know, what so there's a lot that goes into implementing a new system. And, you know, one of those things is, you know, how how are you sustaining it? You know, it's not the end is not when you go live. It's how are you gonna continue to to live and grow in this system. So, you know, is there do you feel like there's a point of self sustainability for Kaufman? You know, are you focused on continuing to partner so that you can focus on mission critical areas? Like, we'd love your perspective on that sort of future look. So we are a small organization. And as far as, like, the administrative back end of it, we are even smaller. Mhmm. So we keep our post production support with CrossVUE primarily if we are rolling out a new module or for our payroll and benefits because you never wanna you never wanna mess up somebody's check or their benefits. So they're the experts there. But we've had the conversations of, you know, do we do we just become our own experts and rely on ourselves and not have that post production support? But when it comes down to it, we all have day jobs. And the expert is has to use day jobs. So, instead of a potential increase in FTEs, to have that expertise here in the building, we find cost savings, through keeping our support with our trusted partners. Yeah. No. And that's thank you for sharing that because I feel like that's a really great point for smaller organizations. You know, how do you how do you manage this? So, Jeff, any thoughts? Yeah. I do. I would say, you know, while we do see some organizations truly reach that kind of self sustainability, with Workday, to Sam's point, you know, PPS in this space can completely scale organically based on the need. Right? So whether it be the light over the shoulder support that we provide, a quick question here and there, or more robust staff and scale augmentation for more heavy seasonal activities, There there are multiple ways that you can, create a partnership that allows for, really just filling in some of the gaps. Right? So that organizations don't necessarily have to go out and hire whole teams of very skilled expert Workday implementers or just with the product itself to depend on them, and and coming to partners, right, to to help there. We do we do see organizations finding a lot of value with. So we're just happy to offer that. And, for organizations looking for it, we can tailor it to whatever you need. Yeah. And it can look there you know, it can look different for different, different orgs, but I just think it's important to to note that those options exist. You know? Because I think we often people might think, well, there's no way we could, you know, we can maintain this. It's like, well, you can just by using different different methods. So alright. So let's where sorry, Jeff. Go ahead. Go ahead. Oh, sorry to interrupt you. I was just gonna say that we often see too I mean, Sam, you were talking about the engagement of a of your project manager. We do see organizations that say, hey. I don't have a project manager that that may know Workday, or I don't have the right testing management activity with in house. And so staff augmentation can be a critical help there for the core deployment itself too. Mhmm. Yeah. Really good point. So, so I wanna kinda, bring us we're getting we're getting close on time. I wanna make sure that we can answer some questions. So I wanna kinda bring us to a close with, sort of looking forward. You know, I've mentioned we mentioned a number of times, you know, continuing the journey. But, Sam, what, what are Kauffman's future plans with Workday? So, we recently hired another administrator, so I get to share the love. It'll be great because it will allow us to look at more modules such as learning or adaptive planning and be able to tackle implementing those and see how the they would benefit us. We just recently released an AI policy for our internal use. So really looking at, what that policy says and the AI with with Workday and how they can align and how we can use the AI that Workday provides a little bit more. Mhmm. And then, you know, we're hoping a few years down the road maybe input including the sourcing and contract management piece. Uh-huh. Yep. We'll see we'll see what we can get done. I love how you guys are thinking. I'll do I actually will put a plug in for that. I feel like we can't talk about the future of any technology without talking about AI and and Workday is a platform that has AI built into the core. So if any folks are planning on joining us in right Arising in San Francisco in September, you will hear a whole heck of a lot more about illuminating the future of your of work with AI, including at the nonprofit summit Arising. So just putting a plug in for that. And there's also digital attendance options. So, we hope to see folks there to learn more about it. So, Jeff, any you wanna share any thoughts about, kind of the the future and what, other foundations like Kaufman might be thinking? Yeah. Absolutely. And and, you know, I think I think I'll just agree with you, Michelle. I think Workday it's impressive how, Workday constantly is evolving in response to the market and looking around corners, specifically in those areas of machine learning and AI. Not not to wholesale change, right, how an organization operates, but really just to, enhance, right, some of the core processes and and and be able to, conduct some, VPs or security or in house operations a little bit smoother. So it's exciting to watch that and be at the forefront of that with with with our client organizations. You know, we we do see other organizations like COP whether they be foundations, associations, or or otherwise, in the same shoes. Right? This is an opportunity to, you know, listen into Workday, listen to partners, and help, help think about, you know, where the road map is wants to take you, where do you wanna go. And partners can help guide organizations, you know, in that kind of change process with whether it be prioritization or just assist assistance with learning more about the Workday product and how it fits with their mission and roadmap. Yeah. Love that. Awesome. Well, thank you both so so much for sharing all this perspective. I wanted to make sure that we had a couple minutes for questions because some have come in in the chat. So I wanna I wanna make sure that, that we get to at least a couple of them. So, let me hit the first one. This is a good one for Sam. What advice would you give to another nonprofit engaging in this type of project? You could do it all again. We could do it all again. I think having your such your subject matter experts at the table whenever you're doing your design phase was critical. Mhmm. We were designing both HCM and finance, so we were in different rooms. And and sometimes I I was in one and sometimes I was in the other. So really understanding that that design phase is is very important. I'll say the Workday learning again, take it as soon as you can. And they offer online. They offer in person depending on what the course is. I've done both, and they're both great. Mhmm. And that project manager is crucial because there are a lot of things that go on in the implementation. Like, for example, we kind of forgot about emails. And when when we're live, we're like, oh goodness. All these emails are coming out and all these notifications, we didn't even think about that. So, having somebody, they're thinking about those things, thinking about integrations, having a conversation with your benefits or financial institution partners that, you know, we're gonna be integrating and getting those conversations started sooner rather than later was really helpful. Yeah. Yeah. Great advice. Really, really good advice. So let me ask you a little bit more of a a a, sorry, product based one. I think this is a really good one, because we didn't touch too much on this. But at Kaufman, are you currently using Workday for your grant management? If a separate system, do you use Workday for grant budgeting and reporting? I think that's a I we've talked a little bit about how you guys are managing that, so it'd be great to share that if you wouldn't mind. So we use, a grants management system called Flux. And we do, we do have integrations that run automatically between Flux and Workday. So as far as our reporting, we get a lot of it out of Flux. We get a lot out of Workday, and we kinda marry that all in our data lake. So yeah. I mean, you get to see both sides or some of the life cycle of a grant in Workday, but we do use a different system. Mhmm. Yeah. I think it's it's important to know just because you guys are a foundation, which uses grants management differently potentially than a different type of nonprofit that could use it through the full life cycle. But we've seen a lot of really successful integration, you know, with Flux and other other systems from for pre award, you know, with foundation. So, so good. Thank you for sharing. Alright. One last one. We're we're just about ready to wrap up, but and I feel like you kind of answered this one already. Did you bring on additional resources to facilitate the project and the training and transition? And that's a you know, for a smaller org. I think you mentioned the projects project manager. I'll let you answer. I mean, we were fortunate enough that we had a consultant that was at the end of his, scope of work that we said, hey. You're not leaving yet. So we did shoot him on, and he was a great project manager. But, no, we we did all the testing ourselves and we we really we attended those weekly meetings and sometimes by, you know, multiple meetings a week. And we had, you know, sequester ourselves in Zoom rooms at the time because of COVID that but we did it all ourselves, and it seemed like a huge task at the time. But we it's really doable. It is really cool. Yeah. No. That's that's great to hear. Awesome. Well, I think we actually went over a couple minutes here, but, but this has been a great conversation. So I just wanna thank you so much, Jeff, Crossview, and most of all, especially to Sam and to the Kauffman Foundation for honoring us with your partnership and for being today here today to share your experiences. Thank you to our audience. If your question was not answered, we will try to follow-up with you. Thanks again for being here, and have a great work day. Thanks, Michelle. Thanks, Sam. Thank you. Thanks, everyone.