Operational Excellence Advancement Program

UW–Madison has an opportunity to improve how Human Resources and Finance services operate across campus. This project aims to make services more consistent, reliable, and easier for faculty and staff to navigate, while preserving the strengths of local expertise within schools, colleges, and units. A shared approach will also help leaders identify issues earlier, coordinate more effectively across units, and respond faster when needs change.

The Operating Model Prototype describes what an improved “future way of working” could look like—one that balances central guidance with local, unit-informed support. It focuses on clarifying decision-making authority, defining roles and responsibilities, and identifying where shared processes make sense. The goal is to improve overall service and coordination while allowing local administrators more time to focus on strategic, higher-value work that supports their local missions.

Anticipated Outcomes

• Improved service levels for recruitment, position management, budgeting, and reporting
• More capacity for local administrators to focus on strategic priorities and unit goals
• More consistent HR and Finance experiences across schools, colleges, and units
• Stronger, earlier visibility into risk and internal control performance
• Clearer accountability and decision rights that support timely, informed action
• Standardized processes that improve efficiency

UW–Madison is implementing an Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) Program to establish a consistent, repeatable approach for identifying, assessing, prioritizing, responding to, and monitoring risks that could affect the university’s strategic goals and mission. The program’s core activities will include maintaining a defined risk universe and an enterprise risk profile, conducting an Enterprise Risk Assessment, coordinating the development of risk response plans, and delivering risk reports that support informed decision-making by campus leaders.

The ERM program is being led by Vice Chancellor for Legal Affairs Nancy Lynch and will remain housed within her portfolio. The goal is to strengthen institutional resilience, encourage innovation, and resource maximization to advance UW–Madison’s teaching, research, and service mission.

Anticipated Outcomes

• Earlier, more proactive detection and response to financial, reputational, operational, strategic, compliance, and technology risks
• Improved risk intelligence for strategic, operational, and financial decision-making
• Clearer accountability and follow-through for risk response, including risk sponsors and owners
• Clearer expectations and risk escalation paths
• Fewer unexpected “fire drills” and crisis-driven responses
• Stronger, more consistent, risk-aware culture across the institution

UW–Madison will streamline and strengthen its Travel and Expense (T&E) audit approach by reassessing current processes, policies, roles, and supporting technology. The goal is to implement a risk-based approach that meets state, research, and University of Wisconsin System Administration (UWSA) requirements, while also reducing today’s backlog. The updated model will be designed for long-term sustainability, using Workday tools and reporting to support more consistent reviews, clearer handoffs, and a simpler end-to-end process.

This work will help strengthen financial stewardship with less administrative burden, enabling faster reimbursements, fewer returns for correction, clearer accountability between central and local units, and more reliable handling of compliance needs. Over time, better data and reporting will help focus audit effort where it matters most, while improving the experience for travelers, approvers, and auditors.

Anticipated Outcomes:

• Faster reimbursement cycle times and more predictable processing
• Reduced backlog and fewer future bottlenecks
• Fewer exceptions and send-backs through clearer policies and standards
• Stronger, more consistent compliance and auditability (including research/grants)
• Better stewardship outcomes with a right-sized, risk-based level of review
• Improved decision-making through clearer reporting and actionable insights

The Inventory Controls project will review how UW–Madison’s construction and facilities materials and tools are tracked, stored, and protected today, and identify areas to potentially improve existing systems. The goal is to balance day-to-day efficiency with good stewardship, security, and clear accountability. The team will review existing policies and procedures, recent planning work, and available tools and reports (including AssetWorks and relevant Workday features). The team will also conduct targeted interviews with key staff to understand how inventory moves from receiving and storage to fulfillment and on-the-job use, looking at access controls, tracking and recordkeeping, cycle counts and audits, reorder levels, and disposal practices.

For Facilities Planning & Management (FP&M) leaders and frontline teams, this project aims to reduce inconsistent practices and “lost-in-the-process” tracking issues by clarifying procedures and strengthening oversight without adding unnecessary steps. For campus customers, better inventory controls mean the right materials and tools are available when they’re needed, improving service reliability and reducing delays.

Anticipated Outcomes

• Reliable availability of materials and tools, reducing delays and rework
• Stronger stewardship of university resources through reduced loss, waste, and stockouts
• Improved accountability and security with clearer ownership, access controls, and auditability
• Greater operational efficiency through standardized processes and better coordination
• Better decision-making through more accurate inventory data, reporting, and analytics

Position Management helps UW–Madison connect workforce needs with budgeting so leaders can plan and hire more effectively.

Today, the way positions are created, changed, and approved differs across schools/colleges and administrative units based on local needs and past practices. This project aims to create a more consistent, university-wide approach—with clear decision steps and shared visibility—while still allowing appropriate local flexibility. A key goal is to establish an approved budget-aligned baseline of positions and a forward-looking plan so hiring and resource decisions can be made more proactively.

With a clearer picture of current positions and future needs, leaders and teams can better understand capacity, tradeoffs, and downstream impacts. This supports more predictable planning for departments and more consistent guidance from HR and Finance that aligns strategy with budget.

Anticipated Outcomes

• A single, approved source of truth for positions aligned with s/c/d budget
• Faster, more consistent position decisions through clearer governance and criteria
• Improved workforce visibility and planning
• Stronger alignment between strategy, budget, and hiring decisions before transactions occur in Workday

UW-Madison’s Administrative AI effort is focused on coordinating strategic leadership for the adoption, investment, assessment, and governance of AI-based, AI-related initiatives and other initiatives that should be considering AI across university-level administrative units to streamline and improve finance, human resources (HR), and facilities processes.

This initiative aims to set a new standard for efficient administration by pairing practical AI solutions with strong data foundations and clear governance.

Today, administrative work often relies on manual steps, unit-specific practices, and knowledge held by a few individuals. This slows cycle times and creates inconsistent experiences for students, faculty, researchers, and staff. This effort connects priority growth areas to clearly scoped AI use cases, launches pilots to test solutions in real workflows, and builds confidence through tangible, relatable successes.

With the right safeguards, Administrative AI can help campus stakeholders spend less time on repetitive tasks, reduce rework, and deliver more consistent, higher-quality service. Using a structured approach to prioritize and track AI use cases will help UW–Madison make smart investments, support adoption, and reinvest time and savings into student success.

Anticipated Outcomes

• A tailored AI use-case prioritization framework to score and compare opportunities
• An AI use-case management catalog to track ideas and progress
• Baseline AI literacy for decision makers to support program strategy and responsible adoption
• Two highlighted AI use cases selected for pilot programming based on scoring data
• AI solution profiles for viable pilots, including expected benefits, financial impacts, risks, controls, and governance needs

UW–Madison Facilities Planning and Management (FP&M) will complete a focused review to identify the priority workflow and data needs across capital planning and project delivery, and to inform planning for a technology solution implementation. The team will evaluate current tools, how work moves from start to finish, and pain points, translating the findings into a practical improvement plan.

The plan will clarify which needs can be met directly in a capital planning and project management software system and which will require additional process updates, training, or coordination across teams, so FP&M can achieve consistent results and smoother project delivery.

Anticipated Outcomes:

• A clear, step-by-step plan for next technology and process improvements
• Clear alignment on potential software scope, fit, and expected benefits
• Simpler workflows and improved project communication
• Fewer delays caused by handoffs and planning bottlenecks
• A practical enablement plan (process updates, training, and change support)