How Carleton College Turned ERP Data Into Current Project Visibility
With VLogic Capital Project Management software, Carleton brings Workday financial data together with project tasks and timelines, giving the facilities team current, self-service visibility without replacing its ERP.
The Transformation
The financial picture stopped being a monthly reconstruction.
Carleton kept Workday as its financial system of record and changed how facilities uses the information inside it.
The team exported general-ledger reports monthly and manually updated budget-to-actual spreadsheets.
Budget and expense data flows into VLogic on a recurring basis, keeping project financials more current.
Financials, tasks, timelines, and status lived in separate systems and tools.
The team manages financial and operational project information together in VLogic.
Team members depended on one administrator to retrieve information and run reports.
Project stakeholders can pull up information themselves and see it immediately.
Carleton replaced Colleague with Workday, but the new ERP still lacked the project-level detail facilities needed.
VLogic was retained and re-integrated with Workday, preserving the capital project operating model.
Same ERP. A more useful operational view.
See VLogic in ActionThe Story
The numbers were in the financial system. The project story was somewhere else.
Carleton College’s facilities team managed capital projects the way many institutions do: financial truth lived in the enterprise financial system, but the day-to-day work did not.
Before VLogic, the team pulled reports from the general ledger once a month and manually re-entered budget-versus-actual figures into spreadsheets. Tasks, timelines, and status lived elsewhere. A current answer meant waiting for the next reporting cycle, and getting any answer often meant asking the project administrator, who carried most of the reporting responsibility.
On paper, Carleton had a financial system of record. In practice, the facilities team had to reconstruct the operational picture around it before it could understand where a project stood.
The Challenge
Monthly exports and spreadsheet updates kept facilities one reporting cycle behind.
Workday could hold the financial truth, but it did not provide the project-level detail Carleton’s facilities team needed to manage the work. Budget, expenses, tasks, timelines, and status had to be assembled across systems.
The process also concentrated access in one person. When someone needed a project answer, the project administrator had to retrieve the information or produce the report, adding administrative work and slowing the team’s access to current information.
The Solution
Carleton made its ERP data operational for facilities.
VLogic sits on top of Workday rather than replacing it. Financial data flows into VLogic on a recurring basis, where the facilities team manages budget and expenses alongside project tasks, timelines, and status.
The strength of that model became clear when Carleton migrated from Colleague to Workday. VLogic was retained and re-integrated in the new environment, continuing to give facilities the project-level detail and operational context the ERP did not provide on its own.
- Workday
- Recurring Data Feed
- VLogic
- Facilities Team
The Results
Current answers, less administrative work, and a system built to last.
Carleton replaced a monthly spreadsheet process with a durable operating view that connects Workday financial data to the daily work of managing capital projects.
Project financials no longer wait for month end.
Recurring data feeds provide more current budget and expense information without rebuilding the picture by hand.
Project stakeholders can answer their own questions.
Team members retrieve project information directly instead of routing every request through one administrator.
Fewer reports and lookups fall to one person.
The project administrator estimated that self-service reporting and reduced manual lookup save roughly three to four hours of administrative time each month.
More than ten years, and one major ERP migration.
VLogic remained part of Carleton’s capital project operating model through the move from Colleague to Workday.
VLogic Capital Project Management
Make the financial system you already have more useful to facilities.
See how VLogic brings financial data, tasks, timelines, and status into one current capital project view.