NextGen

Why NextGen?

Minnesota State plays an essential role in growing the state’s economy and opening doors of educational opportunity to all Minnesotans. Because it is a core value to create a better future for students, their families, and their communities, the opportunity to take a fresh approach to enhance the student experience with a modern Enterprise Resource Planning solution is momentous. This project will improve engagement throughout each student’s education journey by creating a personalized technology experience.

Minnesota State selected Workday as its modern technology solution for its ability to provide Minnesota State with a more consolidated and efficient system. Workday will replace the Integrated Statewide Records System (ISRS), the cornerstone data system for the colleges and universities of Minnesota State for more than 20 years. ISRS was originally developed by in-house information technology professionals to meet the needs of Minnesota’s state colleges and universities after merging as a single system. As campus needs grew and ISRS evolved to support necessary changes, the architecture supporting ISRS is rapidly becoming obsolete.

The NextGen Project strives to:

• Deliver a seamless experience for students across the Minnesota State system, regardless of the Minnesota State institution attended.
• Provide technology that integrates and personalizes student engagement on- and off-campus.
• Apply the use of analytics to guide students through their education and track status towards completion – ensuring students are enrolled in the right courses based on their major and are successfully meeting their goals.
• Enable communications at every level to ensure that multiple channels of communication are used to reach each student.
• Provide streamlined, simplified processes that are reliable, responsive, and developed with the student in mind.
• Use modern technology that delivers personalization of the student experience.
• Create an integrated environment to capture data and improve decision making.

Workday will bring a multitude of benefits to Minnesota State, most notably enhanced service delivery. With Workday, Minnesota State will be able to:

Align and integrate mission critical enterprise data, information, and business processes across the Minnesota State system to support the strategic mission

• Transform business processes through adoption of industry best practices
• Enable enhanced self-service capabilities for faculty, staff, and students
• Reduce the number of outdated systems and act as a single source of truth
• Transform many manual and paper processes to leverage technology
• Improve reporting, transparency, visibility, and audit history capabilities

Standardized processes across the entire system and a robust training program will support faculty, staff, and students in their transition to Workday.

The first phase of the Workday implementation in July 2024 will impact most HR, finance and payroll business processes. Pre-planning for the second phase of the Workday implementation is in progress and will impact student-related processes that are currently in ISRS. 

Minnesota State offers many resources for faculty, staff and student preparing for the transition to NextGen. 

Friends of NextGen
The Friends of NextGen website offers a variety of resources for employees to explore including Frequently Asked Questions, a calendar, the UpNext and Workday Wednesday archive, and hubs for information for student hub, human capital management and finance. 

NextGen UpNext Newsletter
Sign up for the NextGen UpNext Newsletter to get updates on the NextGen transition project. 

Workday Wednesdays 
Workday Wednesdays are monthly presentations held the last Wednesday of each month to give end users the opportunity to become familiar with Workday prior to participating in formal trainings designed for their specific functional area.

Workday Glossary
A glossary of terms that are used within Workday and a definition of their meaning and use within Minnesota State.