Continuous Improvement

As a part of continuing engagement with the finance community, UVAFinance continues to work closely with our partners across Grounds to improve processes and identify and share best practices.

Continuous Improvement Working Groups

As part of the ongoing effort of supporting Continuous Improvement, the Finance Change Enablement & Continuous Improvement team is piloting two improvement initiatives to help schools/units identify improvements/optimizations internally. The groups are focusing on two areas of great interest to UVA in general: Account Certification and Reporting.

1. School of Medicine Continuous Improvement Working Group: Account Certification process

This group's focus was on improving understanding and confidence in the Account Certification process and finding ways to minimize frustration, and unnecessary tasks, and doing the most effective aspects of the Account Certification Process.

The group consisted of 9 SOM team members working through an improvement framework. See this presentation of their findings.

Improvements now in production include new dashboard reports, new details and fields for current reports, and new steps to minimize reconciling differences on projects during close. There are also updates pending to the finance roadmap in progress.

2. Facilities Management Continuous Improvement Working Group: Reporting

This group's focus is improving understanding and confidence in reports and the reporting process, as well as identifying ways to minimize frustration and unnecessary tasks, and have a standard of practice, related to reporting.

Six FM Team members are currently working through an improvement framework where they've already: 1) Conducted an in-depth study of a certain report and the current process to understand reports and 2) Identified and prioritized the pain points they'd like to address.

Next up for this group is to generate ideas for improvement within Facilities Management (items they can control). and then share their recommendations with UVAFinance for consideration in future enhancements.

3. Customer Experience Working Group

This group's focus was to identify opportunities to enhance the customer experience journey and provide recommendations to the UVAFinance Directors to create a unified approach across UVAFinance reflecting our value of Service Excellence.

Working group members included Myron Ballard, Teri Bowen, Danielle Hancock, Susanna Huang, Kriszti Kiss, Franky Kong, Jessica Lenore, Brittany Newton, Sarah Fleming, Mila Savage, and Rylee Wiley, with Andrew Sallans serving as Process Expert and Angela Knobloch leading.

See the group's presentation and recommendations here.

Continuous Improvement Resources

Time Management for Remote Workers

The LinkedIn Learning course, Time Management: Working from Home, will help you establish your home base, craft your schedule, and communicate productively. The last section of the course goes over considerations for working parents and caregivers.

Lean Certificate Program

The UVAFinance Training Team is again offering a series of courses toward a certificate in Lean ideology. Our finance partners in schools and units are invited to join us in these classes!

Lean Fluency: This course provides an overview of Lean concepts and terminology. Upon completion of the course, participants will be able to describe the basics of Lean principles, vocabulary, and tools.

View offerings and register: https://www.myworkday.com/uva/learning/offering/fd8e465bb0b51000ff72d03478c00000?record=bc84cc432c2c100108f9279ca25b0000&type=7c48590b5257100009485b7a25ae0068

Lean in Daily Work: Based on Lean concepts, this class provides practical, easy-to-implement strategies to make your current processes more efficient.

View offerings and register: https://www.myworkday.com/uva/email-universal/inst/17815$427/rel-task/2997$10951.htmld

The Lean Certificate also involves completion of the Lean Projects class, plus 4 Lean Lab classes. Those will be scheduled soon. Watch this space!

Checking Progress: The PDCA Cycle

Continuous Improvement, at its most basic foundation, is about trying something, checking to see how it worked, and adjusting as needed based on feedback (the PDCA Cycle). It’s very easy to spend our energies on “planning” and “doing” and yet neglect the most important piece of “check." The check can be as simple as asking the team “How did that go?” to more formal mechanisms of testing. However, we don’t need to complicate the PDCA Cycle in order to reap tremendous transformational benefits.

You can incorporate the PDCA Cycle into your everyday activities.

During planning, ask how the “check” will occur and when
Identify who needs to have the feedback/output from “check” and how will it be evaluated
Demonstrate a willingness to adjust based on “check”##

The SCAMPER Approach

SCAMPER is a useful list of words to help us think differently about a problem, idea, concept, or issue.

Substitute – What can you substitute? What or who could you use instead?
Combine – What can you combine or bring together?
Adapt – What can you adapt for use as a solution?
Modify – Can you modify or change the item in some way?
Put to Other Uses – What other or new ways could this be used?
Eliminate – What can you get rid of?
Rearrange – What could you rearrange or change around?

Continuous Improvement Bright Spots

Be inspired by these stories of Continuous Improvement from within UVAFinance and our our partners across Grounds.

The Last (and Earliest) Settlement: The Office of Financial Planning & Analysis recently scored a two-for-one on process improvement when the team used new tools to enhance yearly settlement reports and delivered those reports to schools and units in record time.

Taking New Approaches: The first couple months of go-live with Workday Financials has been busy for the entire team. From answering questions and troubleshooting to developing new training and getting information to the website, it is a steady stream of information across Grounds. New data coming into UVAFinance is at a new level and team members are adjusting.

New T&F Portal: Continuous Improvement is one of the four parts of Finance Strategic Transformation. This September, the Office of Financial Planning & Analysis delivers an improvement around the 2023-2023 Tuition and Fee request process.

UVAFinance Strategy Group Preps for Go-Live: Workday Financials goes live on July 1 of this year, and the UVAFinance Strategy Team continues to fine-tune its processes and structure to deliver solid support to both central users and our stakeholders across UVA. The most recent tweaks to the team's organization further the transformation to our new support model.

Continuous Improvement Tips & Tricks

Check out these easy-to-implement CI tips and tricks to make your every day work life easier and work processes smoother!

Selected Videos

Challenging the Status Quo Panel Series

Keyboard Shortcut: New Line in an Excel Cell

Excel is used in so many different ways. It's not just for number crunching anymore. If you are writing text in excel, there is nothing worse than hitting enter to get to another line within the same cell, but going to another cell completely. Press Alt + Enter (Select the Alt button and then the Enter button). This will give you a new line in the same cell!

Keyboard Shortcut: Thesaurus at your Fingertips

Have you ever been typing in a Word document and wanted a better word and couldn't come up with anything? Highlight the word you want to change. Press Shift + F7 (Select the Shift button and at the same time press the F7 button after you highlighted the word you want to change). It will bring a Thesaurus up on the left side of your Word document with a list of other words that you could use.

Keyboard Shortcut: Back to Desktop with One Click

Select the Windows key along with the D key to quickly toggle your desktop and all of your open windows.Press them once and your desktop appears. Press them again and all of your open windows return. This Keyboard shortcut is for Windows users.

Continuous Improvement Manager Resources

Leading at a Distance

As the world gets more digital, more people are working remotely. If you are a manager and have any team members working remotely, you may need to consider how you are leading your team. The LinkedIn Learning course, Leading at a Distance, will help you get results as a leader and as an individual with a remote team.

Resources for Building Continuous Improvement Culture

Angela Knobloch, one of FST's continuous improvement gurus, recommends Brad Fagan's blog post "10 Resources That Will Help Build Your Continuous Improvement Culture." It has info about tips, business analyses, and methodologies.

The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership by Liker & Convis

Are you looking for you a way to take your Lean Leadership to the next level? This book might be for you! In The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership, Liker & Convis take you through the 4 stages of Leadership development: Self Development, Coach and Develop Others, Daily Kaizen, and Hoshin Kanri (Process by which is align vision, goals, and plans for continuous improvement). The best part...you can read the digital version for free through the UVA library. Click HERE.