Voices: Andrew Barnes

Meet engaged stakeholder, Andrew Barnes, Director of Finance, UF College of Pharmacy

Before joining UF in 2025, Andrew’s professional finance experience included being an executive sponsor for a similar Workday implementation. Today, he’s supporting UF’s transformation journey as an engaged stakeholder and advocate for Empowering UF.

How will Workday impact the work of you and your team?
Workday will move a lot of business process out of email inboxes and improve efficiency for documentation, approvals and data mining. Improved reporting capabilities will provide drill-down capabilities and improved overall reporting.

Tell us about your previous experience preparing with colleagues for software changes.
I have served on multiple implementation teams related to Finance and HR Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems. Most recently, I served as the executive sponsor for a Workday implementation and a subject matter expert for the Foundation Data Model.

What advice would you give to staff who haven’t gone through this type of shift in adopting new processes and tools?
If you are new to this kind of shift, stay open and curious. Take it step by step, ask questions, use available resources and share challenges. Focus on your process learning the new tools you have been given.

Anything else you’d like to share?
As Workday stabilizes and everyone becomes more familiar, expect tasks to be easier to manage and follow. Over time, more attention can be spent on data quality and gaining insights into our information.