- Overview
- Agenda
- Speakers
- Lodging
- Parking and Entry
- Slides/Handouts
Workday User Group: Integrations, Reporting, and Data in Action Summit - In-Person Workshop
Where: College of the Holy Cross
1 College Street
Worcester, Massachusetts
Directions
When: Wednesday, November 5, 2025
9:00 am - 3:15 pm
Note: Registration starts at 7:30 am
Workshop Organizer: Kevin Kane of Wesleyan University
Registration Fee:
NERCOMP Member
Early-bird rate through 9/29/25: $175 (savings of $25)
Member rate after 9/29/25: $200
Non-Member
Early-bird rate through 9/29/25: $255 (savings of $45)
Non-Member rate after 9/29/25: $300
The registration covers the workshop, morning break, and lunch.
Event Overview
Join colleagues from across higher education for a hands-on, in-person workshop focused on all things Workday data. This summit will dive into how institutions are approaching critical challenges in integrations, reporting, and data management within their Workday ecosystems. Participants will explore real-world strategies, share successes and lessons learned, and connect with peers who are solving similar problems. Whether you’re a technical expert or a strategic leader, this workshop offers an opportunity to expand your knowledge, strengthen your professional network, and engage with subject matter experts from across the Workday community.
Session Outcomes:
Participants Will:
-Examine common challenges and emerging strategies in Workday integrations, reporting, and data management.
-Engage with peers and subject matter experts to exchange practical solutions and innovative approaches.
-Apply insights from case discussions and networking to strengthen their institution’s Workday practices across both functional and IT domains.
Registration Cancellation Policy:
By clicking the "Register Now" button, you indicate a commitment to attend and will be held responsible for the registration fee. Your fee can be refunded if you notify us of a cancellation at least 5 business days before the event via email to nercomp@nercomp.org.
Event Disclaimer:
NERCOMP reserves the right to use any photographs or other mechanical recordings taken at NERCOMP events in promotional materials. No mechanical recordings of any kind may be used at NERCOMP events without the prior written consent of NERCOMP organizers and presenters. The views and opinions expressed at NERCOMP events do not necessarily reflect those of NERCOMP, nor does NERCOMP make any representation regarding the information presented at NERCOMP events.
Agenda
9:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. Welcome and Introduction to the NERCOMP Workday User Group
Speaker: Kevin Kane, Director of Enterprise Systems, Wesleyan University
Welcome to the second annual NERCOMP Workday Users’ Group! This year is focused on data, reporting, and integrations. This session will provide an overview of the day and crowdsource some feedback on NERCOMP’s future Workday-related professional development offerings.
9:30 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. Data-Driven Integrations: Streamlining Group Management with Workday
Speakers:
Sheetal Ghadse, Integration Developer, Amherst College
Marion Cronin, Assistant Director for Enterprise Solutions and Reporting, Amherst College
This session will explore how integration can drive operational efficiency, using the optimization of Google Groups as a core example. We’ll share how our team leveraged Workday reports and data structures to support Google Group integrations for automated access and communication management.
The session will highlight the process of translating legacy system requirements into Workday-compatible logic, identifying and validating key data elements—such as Academic Appointment data used to define Faculty group membership and Committee data used to identify Administrative Staff entitled to attend Faculty meetings. We’ll also discuss how thoughtful integration design, aligned with reporting requirements, can streamline processes. In addition, we'll showcase the strategic value of SnapLogic as a low-code integration tool and emphasize the importance of reusability in building scalable,
maintainable solutions. Attendees will gain insight into the challenges we encountered and the lessons learned while developing a sustainable, data-driven approach to role-based group management.
10:30 a.m. – 10:45 a.m. Break
10:45 a.m. – 11:45 a.m. The Right Tool for the Job: How IR Uses Workday Discovery Boards
Speaker: Rachael Coombes, Associate Director for Institutional Research, Wellesley College
In 2019, Wellesley College went live with Workday Student, and soon after began preparing to move from its existing student data analytics system to a Workday cloud-based solution using Prism and Discovery Boards. Learn about the collaborative work between IT and Institutional Research - how we planned our data model, handled the system changeover, and continue to build upon and expand our available data, and how Institutional Research utilizes
Discovery Boards to fulfill our data needs. This presentation will include a live demo so you can see how we develop institutional dashboards, build quick reports, and create custom datasets.
11:45 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. NERCOMP Professional Development Update
Speaker: Amy Schack, NERCOMP
Learn about NERCOMP's upcoming professional development offerings, the Mentorship Program, and NERCOMP 2026!
12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. Lunch
1:00 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. Foundation, Platform, and Future: An Essential Guide to Cloud, Data, Integrations, and Development
Speaker: Sam Donnan, Workday
This session is an essential guide to the strategic changes and technical capabilities driving Workday’s platform future, from its cloud foundation to its AI roadmap. We will provide an update on the key platform initiatives you need to understand to maximize your investment and plan your technical roadmap.
The Foundation: Public Cloud Migration & The Data Core
Migration: Understand the transition of Workday's infrastructure to hyperscale Public Cloud providers (AWS, GCP). We will cover the key customer impacts (and the long-term benefits of enhanced resilience and speed of innovation.
Workday Data Cloud: Learn about this major new strategic data layer. The Data Cloud enables zero-copy access to your core HR, Student and Finance data, allowing seamless, secure, bidirectional sharing with external platforms like Snowflake, Databricks, and Salesforce—eliminating data silos and fueling external analytical models.
2. The Platform: Extensibility, Integration, and Development
Workday Build & Extend: Discover the new unified developer platform, Workday Build, which empowers customers and partners to create, share, and scale solutions directly on Workday. This is powered by Workday Extend, the low-code platform for building custom, secure, and update-safe apps that run natively within the Workday user experience.
Workday Orchestrate: See how this powerful, low-code tool enables you to visually design and manage end-to-end, cross-enterprise workflows. Orchestrate serves as the connective tissue that automates processes between Workday (including your Extend apps) and all your critical external systems.
3. The Future: Workday AI – Delivered Today & The Vision
What’s Delivered Today: Explore the measurable, embedded AI features you can be using right now.
Future Vision: Agentic AI: Delve into the next wave: Agentic AI. Workday is transitioning from "AI inside" to "AI as action," with intelligent agents that reason, plan, and autonomously execute complex workflows (e.g., sophisticated recruiting or financial auditing).
Governance with ASOR: Understand the critical role of the Agent System of Record (ASOR), Workday’s foundation for securely managing and governing all AI agents—Workday-built or custom—with the same security and lifecycle management as human employees.
2:00 p.m. – 2:10 p.m. Break
2:10 p.m. – 3:15 p.m. All Things Workday Integration Panel Discussion
Speakers:
Andre Birenzi, Senior Director of Enterprise Systems, Bowdoin College
Julia Keller, Director of Enterprise Systems and Integration Services, Smith College
Criss Laidlaw, Director of Administrative Information Services, Williams College
Kevin Kane, Director of Enterprise Systems, Wesleyan University
Workday has become a cornerstone for modernizing HR, payroll, and student information systems across higher education. Yet, integrating its robust capabilities into diverse institutional ecosystems remains both a strategic opportunity and a significant challenge. This moderated panel discussion brings together experts from Bowdoin, Smith, Williams, and Wesleyan to explore the multi-dimensional aspects of Workday integrations, focusing on strategy, common pain points, lessons learned, and tangible benefits.
The panel will cover topics ranging from core HCM implementations and student modules to the technical and organizational hurdles of platform integration. Attendees will gain insight into how these institutions have aligned Workday adoption with their broader digital transformation strategies, managed cross-campus stakeholders, and addressed data governance complexities. The session will highlight real-world experiences and provide actionable takeaways on
optimizing Workday’s platform for both administrative efficiency and student success.
3:15 p.m. End
Sheetal Ghadse
Sheetal Ghadse is an Integration Developer at Amherst College. She has worked in the IT private sector for over nine years as a Java programmer and integration developer, and five years in Higher Education. At Amherst, she co-led the integration team for the Workday Student implementation project and played an essential role in Workday platform implementation. She is certified Workday Pro - Integrations Administration.
Marion Cronin
Marion Cronin is the Assistant Director for Enterprise Solutions and Reporting at Amherst College. She was the reporting lead and data conversion team member in the Workday implementation project at Amherst College. She also has over 28 years of experience working in IT in Higher Education.
Rachael Coombes
Rachael Coombes is the Associate Director for Institutional Research at Wellesley College. She supports the institutional usage of data across the college by developing, delivering, and supporting strategic and ad hoc dashboards and reports used for analysis, decision-making, and external reporting. Rachael has been involved in student data analytics since she joined Wellesley College as an administrative assistant in 2013. After being a pilot user for the
college’s newly launched analytics system, she was hired as the Business Intelligence Specialist in Library & Technology Services (LTS) in 2015. She made the move from LTS to the Office of Institutional Research in 2022, just as Wellesley went live with Discovery Boards.
Sam Donnan
Sam Donnan is a seasoned information and business systems professional with over two decades of experience driving technology-enabled transformation within enterprise environments. Since 2015, Sam has served as a Principal Enterprise Architect at Workday, where she focuses on introducing customers and prospects to the power of Workday’s technology!
Criss Laidlaw
I currently serve as the Director of Administrative Information Services at Williams College. The AIS team supports the core administrative applications at Williams, including Workday Financials, Workday HCM, and PeopleSoft Campus Solutions. We’re currently implementing
Workday Student. We use SnapLogic as our iPaaS. I served on the Higher Education User Group (HEUG) Board for two elected terms and for two
years as an appointed member, completing my service in 2019. I was also an early member of the HEUG TAG (Technical Advisory Group) and ultimately spent 6 years on the TAG, serving as chair twice. I helped write several TAG white papers, including Effective ERP Practices for the Small Institution (2008), A Deliberate Approach for Leveraging Applications Unlimited (2007) and Moving from PeopleSoft to Fusion (2006).
Andre Birenzi
Enterprise Systems Team, which is comprised of two groups:
1. Workday ERP Services, which manages and coordinates Workday administration and campus-wide support
2. Integrations & Application Services, which oversees system integrations and third-party application support and database administration.
He led his team through Bowdoin’s Workday Financial Management (FIN) implementation, which went live in January 2024, adaptive planning and the Workday Student implementation, which launched in 2025.
Julia Keller
Julia is the Director, Enterprise Data & Integration Services at Smith College. Smith College went live with the Workday platform (FIN and HCM) in 2019 and with Student in 2021. Smith implemented SnapLogic as an iPaaS in 2017, ahead of our Workday implementation, and an enterprise integration strategy, and the formation of a dedicated team was a key part of our success.
Kevin Kane
Kevin is currently the Director of Enterprise Systems at Wesleyan University. His team supports enterprise applications across Wesleyan, including Workday Financials, Workday HCM, PeopleSoft Campus Solutions, and Salesforce. Wesleyan is currently implementing Workday Student with a projected Go-Live in March 2026. Kevin is currently serving his first term as a member of the NERCOMP board.
Amy Schack
Amy Schack currently serves as the Professional Development and Member Relations Manager for the Northeast Regional Computing Program (NERCOMP). In this role, she works directly with professional development organizers to plan and execute workshops and webinars, as well as the Board of Trustees to advance the mission and vision of the organization. She is also the Co-Chair of the Professional Development Committee, the NERCOMP Annual Conference, and the Mentorship Program Development Task Force.
Before joining NERCOMP, Amy worked as the Director of Residential Life at several colleges and universities in New York. Amy holds a Master of Science in Education with a concentration in Counseling from Fordham University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Eastern Connecticut State University. She is also a certified Nature and Forest Therapy Guide through the Association of Nature and Forest Therapy.
Hotel Information:
Rooms are available at the Holiday Inn Express, 10-12 Johnson Street in Auburn, MA. 01501
Call the hotel directly at 1-508-832-2500
Parking:
Please park in the Hogan Campus Center lot. Parking is free. When you enter campus from the last gate on the left (Gate 7) you will soon see a series of large parking lots on your right going all the way up to the Hart Athletic Center. All of those lots are general parking. As long as you make sure not to park in student or faculty/staff parking lots there shouldn’t be any problems.
See Campus Map for Parking locations
There is an electric vehicle (EV) charging stations in the parking garage for a fee. The stations are on the ChargePoint network and the ChargePoint website has information to utilize your smartphone to use the ChargePoint network.
Building Access:
You may enter the building via the steps or ramp adjacent to the parking lot. You are actually entering on the 3rd floor.
Elevators:
You will enter on the 3rd floor and take the elevator up to the 4th floor.
Restrooms:
There are accessible restrooms located within the Hogan Campus Center on each floor