Iowa State University President Steven Leath announced, in an email to students Wednesday morning, the university’s plan to implement a new, more mobile friendly, enterprise software system.

The software is called Workday, and during the next 18 months, students will begin to see it replace some major functions now handled through programs like AccessPlus.

Workday, which was selected by Iowa State officials in December, will provide students and faculty with a more mobile-friendly way to organize finances, register for classes and conduct necessary university-related business.

“ISU prides itself as a leading science and technology university and we want to give our students [the] best in-class experience from our student interfaces,” Jim Kurtenbach, chief information officer for Iowa State University, said.

Kurtenbach said that Workday will replace much of the day-to-day functionality that students currently use AccessPlus for, such as course grades and class registration.

For faculty, Workday will be the primary interface for all payroll, benefits, hiring and other reporting and data management required to run a major state university.

Workday’s biggest draw seems to be its ability to function as a mobile platform, something that programs like AccessPlus have lacked in the past.  

“It’s much better than AccessPlus,” Cole Staudt, student body president, said.

Staudt had the opportunity to test out the new software and provide feedback late last semester. He said that, while the version he used was still in development, the easy, user-friendly interface made it superior to AccessPlus.

Staudt cited the software’s ability to make registering for classes an easier process as one of its biggest benefits.

“When it comes down to registering for classes you should be able to register for all your classes in just one click,” Staudt said. “If you have them all prepared and you’ve made your plans, you’ve thought about it, you just hit register for classes once your section opens and you’re done.”

Staudt also said that Workday should prove to be a fairly easy system for students to learn, especially if they are already familiar with mobile applications. 

“It’s pretty easy to just jump right in,” Staudt said. “Younger people tend to adapt to technology pretty quickly. The developers that are writing the code, they know how we are all interfacing with our apps.”

In his email, Leath expressed the importance of implementing this software as a way “to be more effective and efficient with our resources and, most importantly, meet the changing needs of our students, faculty and staff.”

“It will be a complex, multi-year journey that will challenge all of us to think and perform in new and different ways. But this transformation will yield extraordinary results by providing timely, cost-effective, mobile-enabled functionalities to all users,” Leath said in his written statement.