UW’s $340 million finance upgrade is still struggling, despite progress

Nearly nine months after its rollout, the University of Washington’s $340 million finance system upgrade is still getting mixed reviews. On the plus side, the backlog of unpaid vendor invoices snarled by Workday, UW’s new “enterprise” software platform, has been cut from $90 million shortly after the July 6 launch to $43 million as of Feb. 29. But Workday, which replaced hundreds of legacy systems, is still disrupting UW’s portfolio of research grants, which cover nearly a fifth of its $10.4 billion annual budget and funds everything from experiments in...